Quote:
The professor in this case is undoubtedly using OpenOffice

Sorry, Mark, but I think this quote from your first post most clearly shows where your approach to this thread is coming from. I would never in a million years assume such a thing.

Lets get a little reason here:

- The professor shouldn't have been so curt about the situation, but this to me is the sign of a computer illiterate. The users in my office get frustrated because they don't understand technology, and I can even see them making the situation more difficult that it really is, just because they want to emphasize how inconvenient the computer is being to them.

- The student should have attempted to save to another format, or it should have been suggested to her, but its understandable that this wouldn't be the first thing that would come to mind. It's not her fault that everything changed with the new program.

- Which brings us to MS. They've attempted to start more or less from scratch, but should have recognized that not every Office user is instantly going to upgrade to 2007, so they should have emphasized the fact that if you send a 2007 file to a 2003 user, they're not going to be able to read it.

So basically, it's everyone's fault. But the professor can't help not being able to read it, the student didn't know about the compatibility problems, and MS is trying their best and from what I've heard has created a really good Office suite this time around. So some leeway could be given to all parties involved.

Oh, and I don't like OpenOffice either. I found it pretty clunky too. That doesn't mean I use Office, though. My uses are limited enough to get away with Google exclusively. *edit* I recognize that this means I can't make PPT presentations. That is A-OK with me. *edit*

Rob, I know you were talking about free PDF creators, but I can definitely recommend a free reader. FoxIt is really good. I don't know if the free Acrobat Reader is as slow as the full version of Acrobat, but FoxIt opens PDFs about 10 times faster than the latter.


Edited by Dignan (19/04/2007 15:19)
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Matt