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Author Topic: Mozilla vs. Opera and Open Office vs. MS Office Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 04-04-2007 12:42 AM                        What are your thoughts about and experiences with the Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird combination? So far, I have mostly used Opera, IE sometimes for pages Opera doesn't display well, and Outlook for email. Also, have you tried Open Office? How compatible is it with MS Office?  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 04-04-2007 10:36 AM                     I use Firefox and Thunderbird pretty much exclusively. Firefox is great. Thunderbird is pretty useful. Its spam filter is handy. I just wish it had better address book import/export tools and better support for combining multi-part messages saved in RAR or yENC format. That's one area where Outlook Express has the vanilla install of Thunderbird beat. There may be extensions for Thunderbird that support the features I mentioned. I just haven't seen them yet. I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express, because I don't mess around with MS Office applications much at all and Outlook Express is a major security liability to use.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-04-2007 12:05 PM                     I use open office and find it is 99% as good as MS office but is very slow to load and a memory hog  |  IP: Logged Ian Price Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1714 From: Denver, CO Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-04-2007 12:18 PM                     I use Firefox, Thunderbird and Open Office. I really like Firefox and Thunderbird. I like Open Office but I do find it hard to find some features sometimes. They are all there, but they are slightly different than MS Office. Everybody else can open my "Word .doc" in MS Office except my Father, but that may be an indictment of my Father more than the program. I also use AVG, I'm all about free programs. What I would love to find is a free version of Quicken. There doesn't seem to be any. I did read about one, but they said is was so limited. With open office I have only used Write and Calc. I haven't used the rest of the programs. Does anybody else use Base, Draw, Impress or Math? As for loading slowly, Open Office does load slowly the first time of the day. But it leaves something in the cache and loads quickly after that.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 04-04-2007 06:25 PM                        I read that Firefox and Thunderbird take up a ton of system resources. Is that true? Does it slow down the system noticeably? BTW, for binary messages, I use GrabIt! which is free and extremely parctical and easy to use. It also supports .nzb files. So typically, when I am looking for binary messages, I search for them on newzbin.com, mark the messages I want and export the .nzb file, then open it with GrabIt!. By naming the .nzb file like the directory I want the files to go to, it simply downloads, assembles, and decodes all the messages into that directory.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 04-04-2007 06:48 PM                     I prefer MS stuff overall. It has been a more comprehensive word program for me in what it does, how other programs and downloads translate over to it and I also use Excell alot for keeping track of different theaters maintainance. It is expensive and open office is free. If your budget affords it get the best. Mark  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 04-04-2007 07:10 PM                     for Mozilla based browers, I use good ol' Netscape 7.0 - loads quick, doesn't bug up like IE-6, et.al. Yes, I've noticed that Firefox/Thunderbird versions of the Mozilla kernal are quite the resource hogs... ...like Norton and McAfee (I also use Grisoft Antivirus 7.5 - which is dandy free AV program www.free.grisoft.com It just sits in the background, uses very little resources and still gets the nasties out of the way) I use MS OFFICE 2003, but only have WORD and EXCEL loaded- just to save some resources on this program,  |  IP: Logged Edwin Sheldon Film Handler Posts: 95 From: Mobile, AL, USA Registered: Sep 2006 posted 04-04-2007 08:21 PM                     I've been using Firefox since it was Firebird 0.6. I'm a bit of a fan.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 04-04-2007 09:45 PM                        What about the alleged speed/resource issues?  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 04-04-2007 10:29 PM                     I have a love/hate relationship with Opera...when it is on a good version that mates up well with the particulars of your computer...it is very fast and does the job without popups or picking up hitchikers. Its been awhile since trying Firefox but when I was looking for an IE alternative...Opera, at that time, did the best for me. IE still remains the defacto browser that most web sites test for...there are some sites that Opera won't display correctly that IE will. However, after every IE usage...one must run Ad Aware as there WILL be some sort of tracking cookie loaded in your computer. I'm on Opera 9.10. It is running VERY well on my iMac (Intel duo version) but it was down right nasty on my old iMac DV SE. Film-tech pages would load super slow. Steve  |  IP: Logged Edwin Sheldon Film Handler Posts: 95 From: Mobile, AL, USA Registered: Sep 2006 posted 04-05-2007 01:12 PM                     Firefox has suffered more than its share of memory leaks, but I've never encountered 'speed' issues. In fact, with one simple tweak, it becomes far faster than any other browser I've used. Type 'about:config' in the address bar. In the Filter field, type 'pipe'. Change network.http.pipelining to true If you want, slightly increase the value of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests. Mine's at 8. This will tell Firefox to use HTTP pipelining. quote: HTTP pipelining is a technique in which multiple HTTP requests are written out to a single socket without waiting for the corresponding responses. Pipelining is only supported in HTTP/1.1, not in 1.0. The pipelining of requests results in a dramatic improvement in page loading times, especially over high latency connections (such as satellite Internet connections). Opera supports pipelining out of the box. IE doesn't support it at all. I've always been happy with Mozilla products. They provide the features I want. Security issues are fixed as soon as possible, unlike Microsoft products wherein issues are only fixed once a month, and only if Microsoft feels like it. I use OpenOffice and NeoOffice exclusively. Despite being slow as molasses and a huge memory hog (thank you, Java), I am happy with 99% MS Office compatibility and the free price tag. Also, as a Linux user, running Office is out of the question.  |  IP: Logged Mark Hajducki Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 500 From: Edinburgh, UK Registered: May 2003 posted 04-05-2007 06:15 PM                     quote: Ian Price Does anybody else use Base, Draw, Impress or Math? I use Math (it gives the same end results as MS Equation Editor) it is not as user friendly as Equation Editor, but is a lot faster once you get used to it.  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 04-05-2007 08:41 PM                        Edwin - thanks for the tip. If Opera supports pipelining anyway, it may explain why I have the impression that it loads pages just a little bit faster than Firefox. I have browsed around with Firefox, and I like it, but part from he fact that it always takes a little time to get used to a new browser, I actually still like Opera a little. Will see how that "relationship" develops. But I really like Thunderbird. It seems to have all the necessary functions, but not too much of the unnecessary crap. One thing I like is that each account can have its own subfolders, so my private and my work emails, both received and sent, go directly into the right subfolders. I think you can do that with Outlook, too, but you have to create a set of rules for that. With Thunderbird, it's just a feature of the basic setup of a new account. I couldn't get my gmail account to cooperate with Thunderbird though even though I followed the setup procedure step by step, enabled pop and all that, but it never seemed to connect. One strange feature of Thunderbird is that you don't enter your password in the profile, it asks you for the password the first time you connect. It never asked me for my gmail password, just showed there was some error (but it didn't say which), so I guess it never got that far. For now, I have installed the gmail noifier which runs in the background and tells me when there are new mails in that account. Pretty handy, too, except I would prefer to have all my emails in the same client. I just wonder why it takes up 9 MB in memory. Thunderbird does use quite a bit more memory on my computer than Opera (about 20 MB more), but since I now have 2 GB of memory, that doesn't really matter that much. So it seems to be a good setup to have Opera and maybe Firefox for some pages which Opera doesn't display properly, and IE only for "emergencies", along with Thunderbird for email. Next, I will try Open Ofice.  |  IP: Logged Rick Raskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1100 From: Manassas Virginia Registered: Jan 2003 posted 04-06-2007 03:15 PM                     Thanks for the heads-up on Open Office. I'm not sure if the loading issue will impact us but we are considering using it to replace MS. As the world moves to later MS versions we don't want to have to keep forking up the bucks to stay compatible. I found a FREE web design package "Nvu" that so far looks like a good replacement for Front Page. Anyone have any experience with that one they'd like to share?  |  IP: Logged Adam Martin I'm not even gonna point out the irony. Posts: 3686 From: Dallas, TX Registered: Nov 2000 posted 04-06-2007 08:09 PM                     quote: Rick Raskin I found a FREE web design package "Nvu" that so far looks like a good replacement for Front Page. Anyone have any experience with that one they'd like to share? I use Wordpad. Scott Norwood likes Vi.  |  IP: Logged

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