Still trying to decide which software to download to this machine...

[capri0mni]

So -- here's what I know so far: the OpenOffice suite of programs is much like the Microsoft Office Suite, which is what I'm wanting to replace. It has a word processor, a database and spreadsheet (neither of which I see myself using, but I might miss both, somewhere down the road, if I did not have them), a math editor (Which I will use when cows sprout wings, and we get milky rainstorms and icecream hail), a "Powerpoint" clone (which I'll probably find a use for when we get chocolate fudge floods), and something called "Draw."

From the description, this "Draw" sounds like the shiniest componant of all, helping one make illustrations and link them seamlessly with your document; but for the screen capture, they had rather boring looking flow chart -- not the kind of illustration you'd put into a children's story; I'm thinking Draw is probably like Corel Draw, right?

Is anyone here familiar with Corel Draw (or any of its clones)? How easy is it to use, really? And how artistic can you get with it? Would it be worth the load on my hard drive from the other componants of OpenOffice, if it gave me something like Corel Draw to play with? How playful is it?

Oh, and you may have noticed: I've been playing around with my lj's color scheme so it's a closer match to my icon.... not quite there, but close.

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

I haven't used Corel Draw or OpenOffice Draw. Here's the homepage for the latter.

Write is great. It's very intuitive if you're already familiar with MS Word. Same goes for Calc vs. Excel.

If you want a free open-source painter and graphics editor to play with, I recommend GIMP. There's a bit of a learning curve with some of the interfaces if you're used to something like Paint Shop Pro, but it seems to be just as powerful.

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

I love the OOo drawing program. It's like Paint on speed! And does 3D images too! :-)