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L2TP Tunnels, separating OSPF clouds, Dynamic Routing and Monitoring Services are a few of my favourite things. It was nice to have some rain over the weekend. I really enjoy the rain, it gives me a chance to be a geek without the threat of sunshine and the outdoors raining on my parade. So I spent the weekend studying, trying to enhance my geek chi. I had some comments that my articles are getting a bit soft and fluffy. Not enough technical fat to chew, I think this is true, but there is too little space to get technical, so for the moment I'm going to stick to Free Stuff for the masses!
OpenOffice 3.0. Fantastic free software based on Sun Microystems Star OS. Yes, I know I've coverered this before... But it's new, the 3.0 release brings out some more features and helps make it more attractive for businesses (and home users) to use.
What's so great about OpenOffice!? First, it's been developed for over 20 Years. Yes, 20, that's before the internet was started and networks were only for Government agencies, Large Corporations and Universities.. Well, not quite, but you get my point.
New features in 3.0 are, but not limited to, Mac OS X Support, ODF (Open Document Format 1.2), Import M$ Office 2007 files, Solver, Chart Enhancements, PDF export natively built in, import PDF's too!, Reports, Wikis, workbook sharing, email and calendar client.. the list goes on....
Browser to http://www.openoffice.org/ Read about it, click on the Download link in the top right, then select Download OpenOffice.org. Once downloaded, run the installer, follow the prompts and you're away. When you know your happy with it, remove M$ Office and never look back.
There are a few minor tweaks you might want to do though. Once you have Writer(Word) or Calc (Excel) running select Tools – Options, Load / Save, Microsoft Office. You can set OpenOffice to Load .doc, .docx files and save as that same format. This means your not saving in the ODF, which should be preferred, but if you're sending files to people still chained to Microsoft Office then you need to send them a .doc (Microsoft) file format.
You can acheieve the same thing by Selecting File – Save AS – and selecting Microsoft Office 2003 Document, it depends on how much you share with MS Office. You're only doing this of MS Office users, opening other files in OpenOffice is a sinch.
If the other person doesn't need to edit your file you could also just export the file as a PDF. File – Export As PDF. No extra software, no PDF Printers, just OpenOffice and you have good looking PDF Documents up and running.
Well, that's a brief introduction to 3.0 It's well worth looking at if you don't want to fork out hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office 2007. Happy typing.
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