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Need a good computer assistance forum

Hi, My #2 home-office computer is an obsolete but still useful 450 MHz PC with Windows XP. It has "crashed and burned" (software wise!) and I have to put it back together again after an XP reload (I think I'll rename in Humpty Dumpty!)

Can anyone point me towards a good computer forum where I can get advice on free or shareware software and other IT help? I've not found a Usenet group that does this.

I need to get the following software types installed on the #2 PC right away and need some recommendations:

  1. Word Processor (I will mostly use MS Wordpad with .rtf files as I don't do clever formatting, also Openoffice WRITER is an option for when I'm sent MS Word files.) But my wife still need a way to open obsolete Wordperfect files (not sure our decade-old Corel Wordperfect7 CD will load under XP.)
  2. Spreadsheet (OpenOffice CALC will suffice - it opens .xls and .123 files)
  3. Presentation grahics (liker Powerpoint, which I can't afford.) Openoffice has IMPRESS - I've just made it work with a .ppt file, that's a step forward!
  4. Business card software recommendations (a Google search brings up a lot of trial ones - which is best?)
  5. IE for Internet (on XP CD)
  6. Email - all on Rogers-Yahoo webmail so no problem.

Anyway, rather than burdon the good people here, is there a Windows XP forum I can join to discuss all these questions? Thanks and cheers, Roger

Reply to
Engineer
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Offline for a day or so for a refit, but the chatroom is open and the guys there are helpful.

Ron(UK)

Reply to
Ron Johnson

On Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:10:24 -0700 (PDT), Engineer put finger to keyboard and composed:

Try alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt for PC hardware questions.

Try microsoft.public.windowsxp.general or other groups in that hierarchy for your software questions.

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one \'i\' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

Engineer wrote in news:a6349364-2e2d-4848-8760- snipped-for-privacy@p58g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:

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There's a spot there for questions like yours, and a whole bunch of people who are happy to answer them.

FWIW, Office 2007 Student and Teacher Edition has Word, Powerpoint, and Excel and is price at around $150. It sounds like you make quite a bit of use of those types of programs, so it's probably worth purchasing. Think of it as an investment.

Puckdropper

--
If you\'re quiet, your teeth never touch your ankles.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm
Reply to
Puckdropper

I've found expert help here:

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-S

Reply to
Sofa Slug

Here in the 21st Century, learning to use a search engine is a useful skill:

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Yup.

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Again, learning to use a search engine is a useful skill.

Yup and yup.

You will find the Boolean NOT operator to be useful.

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Anything that can retain the position of the stuff you put on the grid will do for "page layout", no matter how small the "page". Frankly, learning how to use a task-specific app for this seems foolish. OTOH, the general-purpose apps OOo Draw, Inkscape, or Scribus (DTP) could do this. All are GPL'd (gratis & libre).

While you're moving toward free, you could get (gratis & libre) Firefox or SeaMonkey. (AdBlock, FlashBlock, NoScript, etc. make surfing MUCH less annoying.)

Getting a Free Software operating system is something to think about as well. (Dual-boot to start?)

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SeaMonkey or Thunderbird. ..and Gmail allows you to use your local client.

Puckdr>

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That site appears to be for software/web developers. I don't see a forum specific to any of the OP's topics.

If that spot exists, it's not obvious. A more specific link would have been nice.

That's $150 too much for commodity software apps.

In addition, I don't understand why people buy M$ products; that money will be used AGAINST you as Micros~1 purposely makes their products incompatible

--not only with competing products, but **with it's own previous versions as well** The MSFT attitude is

*Screw you if you don't buy into our perpetual-upgrade treadmill*.

Disagree strongly. The OP has already discovered that most non-vertical apps are readily available as gratis offerings (free as in beer). When you include the freedom of GPL, Free Software (not just "freeware") is a no-brainer.

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If the OP hasn't discovered it yet, he will eventually find that some documents generated with previous versions of M$ software can't be opened with the current version of M$'s software. OTOH, OpenOffice.org has a reputation for being able to open those files, making it **more** M$-compatible than M$'s own apps (depending on your definition of "compatible").[1]

OOo 3.0 (just released) also includes support for .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.

--MSFT's latest effort to (yet again) break compatibity. . . [1] A recent "update" to M$Office sought to "cure" the problem of lousy backwards-compatibility by disabling support for the old file formats. 8-|

Screw Microsoft.

Reply to
JeffM

Thanks for all the good replies! Support URL's noted. Since the OP I have downloaded (into #2 PC, my wife's) OpenOffice v2.9 (I think) and it (WRITER) not only opens Wordperfect but CALC opens Excel spreadsheets and IMPRESS opens PowerPoint presentations (I have a few) - presentations can also be created, useful. BTW, I also dumped the Norton suite from #2 PC as it seemed to be slowing things down. I loaded the free Avast! Home Version - working well so far. I enabled Windows firewall, too. I already have OO v2.4 (I think) on my #1 PC used for business - so I'll upgrade that to v2.9, or later, and stick to it for all bus. apps. Virus/Spyware protection on #1 PC will stay as Norton since the Avast! Home version is for only non-commercial use and I respect that. Fortunately, #1 PC (a 3.0 GHZ P4) runs Norton well with no glitches and Norton was "free" (sort of, it's in the rent!) from my ISP, Roger-Yahoo. Cheers, Roger

Reply to
Engineer

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