[Athen] Microsoft Word versus Open Office

[Robert Beach]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for sharing this.  Interesting article, but I would disagree with a few of the points.  One big reason I have no plans to switch to Open Office Writer is because I've had no success in accessing it with a screen reader.

The author states that MS Office cannot reliably handle documents more than 40 pages long.  I find this an interesting statement since we constantly have documents that exceed this and have never had a crash.  In fact, I'm working on a document at home that is around 200 pages long and it has not crashed on me yet.  I know I worked on a document recently that was 243 pages long and had no problems.

As far as styles go, I too do not like what my workers are telling me about Office 07's style system.  However, I really like the Office 03 styling system.  It has worked beautifully for us, even page numbers for going to Ease-Publisher.  Granted, you do have to do a quick edit on NotePad between Office and Publisher, but the files my student did in Office Writer had to have more changes than that for the page numbers to come through.

Over all, I'll stick with Ms Office 03 for now.  The macros, templates and styles we use there are working great for us.





Robert Lee Beach
Assistive Technology Specialist
Kansas City Kansas Community College
7250 State Avenue
Kansas City, KS  66112
Phone:  (913) 288-7671
Fax: (913) 288-7678
E-mail:  rbeach at kckcc.edu


>>> "Berkowitz, Daniel J" <djbrky at bu.edu> 9/12/2007 8:47 AM >>>

Over the years (has it been years) I have espoused the superiority of
Open Office versus Microsoft Word -- especially as concerns their usage
in the work we do with digital textbooks creation and dissemination. 

This article from Linux.com just adds fuel to my ire...
http://www.linux.com/feature/118986 


 
=========================
Daniel Berkowitz - Assistant Director
Boston University Office of Disability Services
19 Deerfield Street, 2nd floor
Boston, MA 02215
 
(617) 353-3658 (office)
(617) 353-9646 (fax)
djbrky at bu.edu (eMail)
www.bu.edu/disability 
 


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