Customer Reviews

OpenOffice.org 2.x Resource Kit

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you're an OpenOffice user or an aspiring one, then spoil yourself with Solveig Haugland's [...] 2 Guidebook. This book ruined my day when it arrived. I had things to do, places to go. But once I opened it up, I couldn't put it down. I don't remember blinking for the first few chapters. Or so it seemed. Solveig has a reputation of being one of the upper-tier brains in tech; that is, she's one of those unique people who can economically explain complex operations in a clear, step-by-step manner. What takes others 57 steps and 400 words to explain, she can reduce to 5 steps and 75 words, only you remember it! Think back and this is what your best teachers did when you were in school. The book is supplemented by her prolific OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas site which not only teaches you the ins and outs of OpenOffice.org, but it's where she gets a chance to interact with users and gain feedback on topics beyond the book. She even includes a section on "everything that didn't make it in the book." That alone is a challenge to readers, but these topics are also covered on her blog above. So if you are or you know an OpenOffice.org user, this book would be an invaluable resource to have at their left hand.

'Practicality' describes this book best. It is full of useful tips for situations that arise in 'real work.' It is not an academic or theoretical treatise, nor is it a true 'manual' in the sense of feeling the need to describe every option in every drop-down box.

The index is extremely well-done; it is easy to find the solution to a given working problem quickly and efficiently. For instance, I was working on an ebook that required numerous changes in page numbering throughout the book. This would have taken an hour or more on my own; with the Guidebook, I reached 'misson accomplished' status in about ten minutes.

To set the level here, I am no OpenOffice/StarOffice beginner; I have used the products back to the day before Sun bought out StarOffice and when the print manuals were completely, and only, in German. Yet, in just the first five pages of the Guide, I found two new tips, and it just got better after that. The 'demystification' of the use of styles is alone worth more than the price of the book.

The Guide is best for someone with some experience with office suites; complete beginners need to start with a tutorial book first. But if you have any level of knowledge, from rudimentary on up through expert, and want a large number of practical tips on how to really work effectively with OpenOffice, get this book at once.

I must say, I was instantly impressed with what an excellent book this is for "Real World" OpenOffice.org users! A book that's written for people, such as myself, who already know how to size a window / what a spreadsheet is / how to save a file /etc. Instead, Solveig did an excellent job in showing how to optimize OpenOffice.org by getting right to the point of what I need to know.

There were other things about this book that also impressed me:

1) The first think I personally look at upon comtemplating buying any type of computer book is:..... the INDEX ! Like many in this downsized workplace of today, I don't have the time to go on an "Easter Egg Hunt", trying to find the "candy" I need. The book's superlative index immediately won me over.

2) Ample Illustrations; Truer words were never spoken than "a picture is worth a thousand words". Again, the illustrations appeared to be applicable, sharply focused, and honed in on "where the function is at". Again, an excellent job.

3) A Business like writing style: I had previously purchased Robin Miller's book, "Point-And-Click OpenOffice.org", and it reads like it's intended audience is Mrs. Murphy's 4th Grade Class ! Solveig's writing style, on the other hand is user friendly, in a way that doesn't insult the intelligence of her readers. Again, I like that.

Bottom line: This is a book worth buying because it clearly explains just how much OpenOffice.org can do in a manner that instills confidence in the reader.

Before I received this book I was using OO writer and calc in my business and although pleased with it, I'd inevitably wind up fighting with certain automatic settings like numbering or page styles or paragraph formatting and rather than relying on OO's formating capabilities I'd muddled through and hand forced the formatting the way I thought it should come out.

Solveig Haugland's book changed all that. The clear explanations of what was going on beneath the WYSIWYG interface and how they related to the configuration settings, coupled with the book's suggestions on defaults, made me far more productive with OO than I'd been before.

I dislike reading long documents online and needed a book that would be a complete tutorial on OpenOffice. I got tired of the issues, bulk and expense of the "other" office suite. I could not have picked a better book. Starts out with a bang and keeps on delivering! If you want to learn OpenOffice, this is the book to get.

Once again, Solveig has managed to make this awesome software more approachable. Those little quirks where you can't quite find what you need because the interface isn't what you're used to are all handled easily with the aid of this book. Easy to navigate, easy to follow, always seems to provide the answer needed. Highly recommended.

This book fulfils a huge need we had! For all sorts of reasons we ended up with two PCs with OpenOffice.org on them, one running windows XP and one running Ubuntu. So this book is teaching us all the tips and tricks we need to know to get the best out of this suite in two totally different environments.

This is a good book to get started with using Open Office. Most of the things I do involve Spreadsheets and some word processing stuff. I recently decided to try and use Open Office exclusively and so far (about 2 months) have had very little trouble doing this. The book has been a help and lead me to try some things that I hadn't even thought of before. I would recommend this book for others who are thinking about trying Open Office.

WOW! Solveig is incredible.
This book covers a lot of things you need to know and is even a great book for who, like me, teaches IT.
The way it is written is fantastic:
even the hardest things are explained in a very easy and amusing way.

Good job! Great bargain!

more real life examples and useful lessons needed for this, not the type of book I would recommend for a structured / class type learning environment. Over priced for the value received. Anyone want to buy a used door stop?