Looking for Office/Excel and/or Word & Good Photo Editing Programme???

[Atheling]

It's actually Photoshop Elements that I'm having the compatibility issues with.

I've downloaded Picassa just for now. I'll certainly be seeing to it that I get something less basic very soon.

Darrell.

[Archie]

Personally I use

Paint.net

for photomanipulations.

Its free which is nice!

[beefcake]

I quite like paint.net. It allows you to layer images which is always great and has some good tools. Great for a free program

[Atheling]

follow bobs advice its exactly what I would have said too.

So, just to recap, paint.net allows you to re-size the pics?

Darrell.

[eilif]

So,
    Did Open Office work out for you?  I had a good experience with Open Office.  I had an old laptop that was getting buggy so I switched to Linux and open Office (formerly Windows and MSOffice).  Worked great for a while, but it turned out it was bad hardware and not bad software as I had assumed and the whole computer died a couple months later.  Still, I highly recommend Open Office as an alternative to Microsoft.  I even recommend Linux as a fine operating system (even for computer simpleton folks like me) if all you need to do is basic office type functions and web surfing.  If you want gaming and other programs, stick with windows or Apple.

[Tactalvanic]

So, just to recap, paint.net allows you to re-size the pics?

Darrell.

Yes, it does that

[Atheling]

So,
    Did Open Office work out for you?  I had a good experience with Open Office.  I had an old laptop that was getting buggy so I switched to Linux and open Office (formerly Windows and MSOffice).  Worked great for a while, but it turned out it was bad hardware and not bad software as I had assumed and the whole computer died a couple months later.  Still, I highly recommend Open Office as an alternative to Microsoft.  I even recommend Linux as a fine operating system (even for computer simpleton folks like me) if all you need to do is basic office type functions and web surfing.  If you want gaming and other programs, stick with windows or Apple.

Well, to be blunt, it didn't. I downloaded it and ended up with a miriad of Trojan's in my (one month old laptop) so I had to clean it all out and start from the beginning.

I've now successfully downloaded Picassa which I'm happy with except I cannot find the function for reducing the number of pixels in a picture! If you can help with that it would be great?

I'm going to go on Martyn's Money Saver (etc) site for a link to Open Office very soon.  do it right this time!! 

Cheers,
Darrell.

[Jevenkah]

Count me as another happy user of OpenOffice! With 5 different windows machines running, free open source was the only way to go. The whole suite can do pretty much any of the basic functions of their respective programs; I've used the word processing extensively, and the spreadsheet program sporadically and I've been pleased with both. (I have not done any kind of advanced formulas or programming with the spreadsheet program, just adding/subtracting ranges)

https://www.openoffice.org/ is the official website, complete with free download.

As for Photo editing, Adobe LightRoom can do a host of basic, handy functions (Exposure, white balance, crop, resize, to name a few quickly) even though it is primarily a cataloging tool. It is more expensive than free, but if your photo library is out of control I found it to be worth the money. It easily takes me a quarter of the time to review and rate my photos after a game night.

Good luck!
Jevenkah

[Atheling]

Count me as another happy user of OpenOffice! With 5 different windows machines running, free open source was the only way to go. The whole suite can do pretty much any of the basic functions of their respective programs; I've used the word processing extensively, and the spreadsheet program sporadically and I've been pleased with both. (I have not done any kind of advanced formulas or programming with the spreadsheet program, just adding/subtracting ranges)

https://www.openoffice.org/ is the official website, complete with free download.

As for Photo editing, Adobe LightRoom can do a host of basic, handy functions (Exposure, white balance, crop, resize, to name a few quickly) even though it is primarily a cataloging tool. It is more expensive than free, but if your photo library is out of control I found it to be worth the money. It easily takes me a quarter of the time to review and rate my photos after a game night.

Thanks for the direct link  .

You know, I do feel kind of dumb when it comes to being savvy about technology... I always seem one step behind (phones etc) and i've never really understood PC's/Laptops  .

I think I need to pull my finger out as now with Windows *.1 it's all Apps etc!! 

Darrell.

[Connectamabob]

If resizing is all you need, MSPaint is all you need. I know I talked about other stuff earlier, but that was before I knew how simple your needs were.

Just as a heads up: OpenOffice is is on life support right now dev-wise, and may not have a future. Well, technically OpenOffice proper has been dead since 2011, and what you get from openoffice.org is actually Apache OpenOffice, which is a sort of quasi-fork, which is currently stalled/flagging.

LibreOffice is the most up-to-date and well supported fork (to the point where it's the default option bundled with major Linux distros now). Support, updates, and dev team is healthier with LO than with AOO, and a chunk of the LO dev team is made up of ex-OO/AOO devs.

https://www.libreoffice.org/

[Atheling]

If resizing is all you need, MSPaint is all you need. I know I talked about other stuff earlier, but that was before I knew how simple your needs were.

Thanks but I'm used to using Photoshop so resizing is one thing but I use a whole host of others.

Darrell.

[eilif]

Just wanted to clarify. I think it was actually Libreoffice that I used as well.  I was running it on some version of Mint, though I don't recall which.

[Atheling]

Just wanted to clarify. I think it was actually Libreoffice that I used as well.  I was running it on some version of Mint, though I don't recall which.

I don't have a scooby about Mint or what it is?

Darrell.

[Tactalvanic]

Mint is a linux distribution - an alternative operating system to windows, I can add more but you don't need it right now.

You already have an operating system on your machine - so currently its probably a level of complication you don't want.

Just work through what your doing, keep to the direct links to software you want to try/use and you will gradually learn and get what you need.

openoffice is fine, libreoffice is newer and still actively developed, but Either will do what you want on the system you have.

Places like

http://sourceforge.net/

can be useful for finding open source software for any operating system including windows variations. Some of its good, some not, but you can see from peoples comments, the number of downloads etc how good/bad something is and whether its useful to you.

Keep on going as you are, its all good stuff to learn 

things like gimp, paint.net etc can feel complicated at first, but its more just learning how to use them than anything, they will do what you tell them to do 

Theres lots of documentation to when your googlefoo is working & plenty of people on here that can drop the odd hint to it seems.

[Atheling]

Thanks- really informative- and appreciated  .

Darrell.