Gyroscopic Investing

fyi - this LibreOffice office software suite, is a good free, open source alternative to Microsoft Office.

http://www.libreoffice.org/download

This LibreOffice is a "fork" from OpenOffice, which had been acquired by the software company Oracle.  A nonprofit group called The Document Foundation was created, with the main intent to develop/maintain this LibreOffice.  The Document Foundation folks apparently claim that Oracle was slow to integrate enhancements created by non-Oracle software engineer volunteers, & thus created LibreOffice.

I happened to already have MicroSoft Office, but of curiosity also installed this LibreOffice.  AFAICT there is no problem with having both suites installed concurrently on my PC.

I'm experimenting with this plan: any new office doc I need to create, create it in LibreOffice.  For that particular document, if I find that the functionality I need doesn't exist or is too cumbersome in LibreOffice, I can always switch back that document into MS Office.

There's 2 benefits I like about LibreOffice
1 The files can be shared with anyone with an office suite on their PC.  Because the files are saved in Open Document format, supposedly they can be opened by anyone that has any modern office suite on their PC.  Even if someone doesn't have a suite, they could install LibreOffice in order to view a file.

2  Due to the Open Document format, it is more likely that these files will be readable years & maybe even decades later, as compared to the proprietary MS file formats.  I read that certain large organizations, such as the Brazilian government, considered this strength as a reason to use LibreOffice, as it was more compatible with their desired document archiving business process.

By chance do you have experience using both LibreOffice & MS Office?  For spreadsheet or word processing, have you found any frustrating functionality limitation on LibreOffice relative to MS Office?

I use Linux which is supported by Open/LibreOffice and not supported by MS Office.  I rarely have problems, even sharing documents with co-workers who use MS Office.

The only problem I can recall is with intricately-formatted Word documents such as paperwork forms or resumes.  OpenOffice uses slightly different fonts so things may be .01" wider or narrower here and there.  Normally that doesn't make a difference, but if someone spends hours fine tuning things to barely fit on one page in Word, it might click over to two pages in OpenOffice Writer.

It's a small price to pay to avoid the multi-hundred-dollar price tag and MS lock-in. 

I've used OpenOffice.org software since 2002, not just Writer and Calc, but the entire suite.  Its features exceed what most users will ever dream of needing, just not as excessively as M$ Office.  From word processing to spreadsheets to databases to presentations to drawing to math formulas, this suite has it. It operates across OS platforms. Its files are also compatible with other suites, and in some cases OO.org is MORE backwardly compatible with prior versions of M$ Office than M$ Office itself.  Though open-source, OO.org has always been dependent on the $$ and goodwill of Sun Micro, which Oracle bought along with MYSQL AB. At this point, I'm not sure that a fork to LibreOffice is of much consequence, but such is the way of the Free and Open Source Software world.

BTW: OO.org is very useful for financial analysis and portfolio tracking.  (Try the GetQuote feature.) 

This is not some hobbyist software, but a robust suite that's been adopted by governments, educational institutions, and companies around the world.  http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... eployments

Try it, you'll like it.

i have been using open office as well, i am a long way from using even a fraction of its features, but so far i haven't found anything i want it to do or open that it wouldn't, and GetQuote is great

I've always heard good things about OpenOffice (and would expect the same of its progeny.)

I personally find myself using Google Docs for anything I'm comfortable having "in the cloud".  It comes in very handy.