Putting It All Together—Suggestions/Tips

[davewill]

... Speaking of office 365, if you don't have it already, and you're enrolled as a student somewhere, you can get Office 365 for free through most schools. Though it's pretty cheap even without that, particularly if you're sharing it with a family and spreading the costs. Either way, you'll want Word and Excel at least, those are quite handy with all the projects and academic writing needed in the UL courses.

I was quite successful using LibreOffice for all of my schoolwork. I will note that I didn't have to deal with group projects, just had to export PDFs or MS Office files to turn in.

[Merlin]

... Speaking of office 365, if you don't have it already, and you're enrolled as a student somewhere, you can get Office 365 for free through most schools. Though it's pretty cheap even without that, particularly if you're sharing it with a family and spreading the costs. Either way, you'll want Word and Excel at least, those are quite handy with all the projects and academic writing needed in the UL courses.

I was quite successful using LibreOffice for all of my schoolwork. I will note that I didn't have to deal with group projects, just had to export PDFs or MS Office files to turn in.

I also use Google docs to get a lot of that kind of stuff done. But IMO MS Office works better and is less likely to cause potential compatibility issues.

[sanantone]

... Speaking of office 365, if you don't have it already, and you're enrolled as a student somewhere, you can get Office 365 for free through most schools. Though it's pretty cheap even without that, particularly if you're sharing it with a family and spreading the costs. Either way, you'll want Word and Excel at least, those are quite handy with all the projects and academic writing needed in the UL courses.

I was quite successful using LibreOffice for all of my schoolwork. I will note that I didn't have to deal with group projects, just had to export PDFs or MS Office files to turn in.

I also use Google docs to get a lot of that kind of stuff done. But IMO MS Office works better and is less likely to cause potential compatibility issues.

I used OpenOffice many years ago until I lost an entire paper.

[Merlin]

... Speaking of office 365, if you don't have it already, and you're enrolled as a student somewhere, you can get Office 365 for free through most schools. Though it's pretty cheap even without that, particularly if you're sharing it with a family and spreading the costs. Either way, you'll want Word and Excel at least, those are quite handy with all the projects and academic writing needed in the UL courses.

I was quite successful using LibreOffice for all of my schoolwork. I will note that I didn't have to deal with group projects, just had to export PDFs or MS Office files to turn in.

I also use Google docs to get a lot of that kind of stuff done. But IMO MS Office works better and is less likely to cause potential compatibility issues.

I used OpenOffice many years ago until I lost an entire paper.

Yep. I prefer to avoid any potential issues. Losing a paper would blow hardcore. I know we have had people here on the forum complain about compatibility problems with documents exported from other applications to Word format too.

Considering that Office 365 is free (or can be for enrolled students, and less than $10/mo for anyone else) there is no reason not to use it, IMO.

[mysonx3]

Counterargument: some people use Linux/ChromeOS and don't have that option.

Although having recently gotten a Windows computer again because I needed it for school, I am SOOO glad to have Office back. Especially for free.

Sent from my LM-Q610(FGN) using Tapatalk

[Merlin]

Counterargument: some people use Linux/ChromeOS and don't have that option.

Although having recently gotten a Windows computer again because I needed it for school, I am SOOO glad to have Office back. Especially for free.

Sent from my LM-Q610(FGN) using Tapatalk

I have a Linux workstation as well, though it isn't my primary desktop system. However, when I need to, I have run Windows in a VM on that machine for specialized applications. Anyone savvy enough to use Linux as their primary desktop will more than likely have that ability, so Linux isn't really a stumbling block.

That being said, I'm pretty sure that there are maybe a handful of people this forum who use Linux or ChromeOS as their primary desktop OS. Usage statistics suggest that most people will be Windows users, a minority will be Mac users, and a tiny fraction will use something else.

Plus, Office is so much more polished than the open source options, as you suggest.

[davewill]

Hard to read all this FUD. There are lots of reasons to pick one over the other, but I use LibreOffice all the time, and it is stable, full featured, and completely competent. Honestly, it has never given me a moment's trouble. There's certainly no danger of losing one's files.

I'm not going to tell anyone NOT to pick Office, but fear of the open version is not a good reason.