[TriLUG] New user seeking advice\help

[Roy Vestal]

While some folks can make the migration from Microsoft Office to 
OpenOffice, there are some that need to be able to run MS Office due to 
client needs where the import/export within OpenOffice will not work or 
may loose formatting necessary. I've run into this personally a few times.

The question that hasn't been asked, and needs to be, is what Version of 
Microsoft Office are you wanting to use? Office 2000? Office 2003? 
Depending on this will also depend on the solution.

I would agree with trying OpenOffice on Windows. You can download a 
Windows version easily from http://www.openoffice.org. It will NOT 
affect how Microsoft Office runs. Also during the installation, you can 
tell it NOT to change file type associations. I run both on my Windows 
installation.

Because of the plugins you say you need, I'm thinking you may need to 
run MS Office under Linux. However, this can be tricky as pointed out 
earlier in this thread. CodeWeavers, mentioned below offers a 
commercially available version of the linux product WINE(Wine Is Not an 
Emulator). WINE is a set of API's for linux that will allow most 
Microsoft Windows based programs to run on linux. Although WINE itself 
is opensource, codeweavers has done major enhancements to the product 
where most Microsoft Products, specifically Microsoft Office and it's 
plugins, will work properly. The other thing you purchase is their 
technical support. I suggest this as a route for someone new to linux 
and still needing MS Office. Code Weaver's product is CrossoverOffice 
and is fairly inexpensive. I've personally used both CrossoverOffice and 
Wine. However, I did not have the plugins you do so you will want to 
check with them before the purchase to verify the plugins are supported.

You can check out the WINE project for yourself and see if ALL of your 
needs are met with the freely available WINE. There is an Application 
Database that you can search to see if your version of MS Office and 
plugins have been supported on the freely available WINE. The website is 
http://www.winehq.com. The installation of WINE has really been improved 
over the past few years, but it might be a daunting task to a newcomer 
to linux.

Another alternative you can try is to use a virtual machine. This will 
allow you to run linux as a virtual machine on your Windows desktop. The 
easiest to use is VMWare. They have a 30 day trial that you can 
download. I personally use another opensource project, QEMU. It offers 
the same ability, virtual machines on Windows, but does require some 
reading and a little work to get it working. It's installation is not as 
straight forward as it should be, so it can be tedious to setup. I would 
suggest you use the 30 Day VMWare to evaluate what you need. 
http://www.vmware.com or http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

As for me, I run Windows XP in a dual boot with Fedora Core on my T43. 
The only issue I have run in to is getting the built in Intel IPW2200 
wireless working. There is a project that has figured it out and it's 
pretty straight forward. http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/ is the website. 
Worked like a champ.

HTH,
Roy


Cristobal Palmer wrote:

>Pallavi,
>
>I definitely recommend you look into OpenOffice.org (
>http://www.openoffice.org/ ), but in the meantime it sounds like you
>want to buy CrossOver Office ( http://www.codeweavers.com/ ), since
>that _should_ let you use your addins.
>
>It sounds like it would take a fair amount of work for you to
>transition to OpenOffice, but--imho--the benefits will outweigh the
>costs. It's a one-time investment of time and energy, and there are no
>recurring software upgrade costs once you've made the transition.
>
>I also recommend Ubuntu ( http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ ). They'll even
>ship you a CD set for free! ( https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ )
>
>-CMP
>
>On 1/24/06, argotera <argotera at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Mike,
>>  thank you,  I  use excel and various addins like solver  ,treeplan etc for regression analysis and  business modeling.
>>
>>  regards
>>  Pallavi
>>
>>
>>Mike Parkhurst <Mike.Parkhurst at samsys.com> wrote:  On Tue, 2006-01-24 at 02:58 -0800, argotera wrote:
>>
>>Do you need MS Word and Excel, or do you need to open .doc and .xls
>>files, or do you just need a good editor and spreadsheet?  The reason I
>>ask is because it is not trivial to get Word or Excel running under
>>Linux.  However, many Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu include office
>>applications that can open most .doc and .xls files as well as native
>>file types.
>>
>>Mike
>>
>>    
>>
>>> Hi All:)
>>>
>>> I want to switch from windows to Linux, the two things i use most are  word and excel especially excel please recommend which linux  distribution would be best suited . I use an IBM T43.
>>>
>>>  your help is really appreciated.
>>>
>>>  thanks and regards
>>>  Pallavi
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>adios n  ayez un jour magnifique
>>>Pallavi
>>>
>>>---------------------------------
>>>Yahoo! Photos
>>> Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays, whatever.
>>>      
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>adios n  ayez un jour magnifique
>>Pallavi
>>
>>---------------------------------
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>
>
>--
>
>Cristobal M. Palmer
>UNC-CH SILS Student
>cristobalpalmer at gmail.com
>cmpalmer at ils.unc.edu
>ils.unc.edu/~cmpalmer
>"Television-free since 2003"
>  
>