Replies

Richard,

Thanks for the input. I read the Document Foundation white paper that you included and it has some good information in it. I will probably end up switching to the open office formats.

Randy

Hi Fred,

I appreciated this article as it was very timely for me. I have a follow-up question that I’d like to ask about file types.

Several years ago you recommended using the rtf file type because of it’s universal use, and I’ve followed that advice as much as possible. Most of my text files are save in this format, but with the newer Microsoft file types such as docx and xlsx, as well as the default file types for the office suites that you’ve reviewed in this article, can you tell us what you currently use or recommend.

I’m still using Office 2003 and the majority of my files are now saved as rtf, doc, and xls file types. I’ve done some limited experimenting with docx and sometimes there is a favorable file size reduction. I’m going to be switching to one of the non-Microsoft suites and I’d like your input. Because both LibreOffice and Open Office can use the Microsoft file types there are a lot of options. I could use the converters in Office 2003 to convert my existing files to the newer Microsoft file types, I could use whatever new office suite I end up with and convert to their default file types, or I could leave everything as is.

I apologize if you’ve already addressed this issue. Thanks in advance.

Randy Hoffner

Just wanted to comment that I’ve also wondered why Fred always recommended MSE. Each time I’ve installed it I’ve ended up replacing it with AVG or more recently with Avast, because of the extreme change in system startup and also noticeable slowdowns to the point of almost lockups. I had tried version 1 and had these problems. When version 2 came out and Fred was still recommending it I tried it again, and had the same results. Although I haven’t done controlled testing such as Fred did for this article, I can guarantee you that MSE is a “pig” on the systems I’ve tried it on. My only explanation is that all of the computers that I’ve installed MSE on were older systems (more than 5 years old) and all were running Windows XP SP3, with anywhere from 500 MB to 2 GB of ram. All solid computers running Office 2003 era programs. The worst case was a Dell that had 500 MB of ram, but even if this wasn’t the fastest computer in the world, it ran ok with AVG, but was almost unusable with MSE.