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Re: [OS:N:] for all those... / [school-discuss] From Microsoft: AGuide to Accepting Donated Computers for Your School



On Fri, 2002-04-19 at 12:44, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> Unfortunately, there are a few exceptions.  I can't say that I've ever
> gotten KWord or AbiWord to open a Microsoft Word document, but I can use
> HTML or RTF as interim formats.  StarOffice does a better job, but it's
> so bloated that it takes about 30 seconds to load on my Athlon/1GHz with
> 512MB RAM!  I know that there are lots of people working on these
> projects, and I can be sure that they will eventually overtake Microsoft
> Office (especially with Microsoft's fascist anti-piracy practices). 
> While there may not yet be an open-source suite (as far as I know) that
> is as complete as Microsoft Office, few people really need an office
> suite that does all that.  For the time being, you may want a Win98
> machine in the corner for running MS Office. 

While there are not yet any open source solutions to the M$ Office
compatibility problem, there is a Linux solution.  Hancom Office
(http://en.hancom.com/index.html) is a 100% M$ Office compatible suite
that even looks like the corresponding M$ apps.  It will load and save
Word, Power Point, and Exel files.  I've been using it with my students
who needed a way to work at home and in our Linux lab at school.  It is
cheaper than M$ Office and is available for Linux and Windows (Hancom
now has their own Linux distro which they are marketing heavily in
Asia), so it could be the single school wide solution to the office
suite problem.

jeff elkner
yorktown high school
arlington, va