[Techtalk] Report on CrossOver Office

[Marian Routh]

Hi - Several list members expressed an interest in a report on my 
experience with CrossOver Office, so here it is.  I've taken you all at 
your word that you really want to hear this, so this report is a big 
long.

Specs on this box: Athlon Tbird 1.2GHz, 512 SDRAM, dual boot w/WinXP, 
SuSE 8.0, KDE 3.0.1.  SuSE is very stable and wonderful.

Ordered CXOffice 1.10 on CD because I thought it would have a bit of 
printed material, but it didn't, just the CD.  A mild disappointment, 
but no big.

Installed as user (as opposed to root) since I'm the only one on this 
box.  Printed out installation instructions and followed them.  
Instructions were written very clearly and completely, and installation 
was easy.  I only installed MS Office 2000 - Word, Excel, and Outlook.  
You have to have IE 5.0 at least, so I went with the standard install 
of it.

I had some problems with the first installation.  Word and Excel opened 
fine, but Outlook crashed and then would never open again.  Word and 
Excel opened, but were frozen.  I uninstalled the whole shebang and 
reinstalled.  Everything worked.

Issues with Word and Excel - They seem to work great, I just can't get 
my stuff to print in color.  I'm working with CodeWeavers tech support 
on that.  I had some configuration questions; i.e., where to put my 
custom templates, and tech support quickly solved that.

Issues with Outlook - Outlook is still too fragile for reliability.  It 
says it can't import my Calendar backup file and quits the import with 
an error message, however it looks like my Calendar entries are in 
there.  Normally, I would backup the whole Outlook Personal Folders in 
one .pst file, but because of the Calendar problem it didn't import my 
Contacts.  So I backed up the Contacts file separately and was able to 
import it easily.  Where I have found instability - tried to add 
additional email accounts and Outlook crashed and disappeared.  Was 
typing an email (actually this report so it was lengthy) and it crashed 
and exited.  It should be noted that CodeWeavers has said that Outlook 
is still buggy.  They are extremely upfront about any shortcomings in 
CXOffice.  I'm working with their tech support on the Outlook problems, 
but I think we all agree that true stability may not be available until 
a later version.

So basically, as soon as we get the color printing issue in Word 
resolved, I'm using Word and Excel just like I did in Windows.  I must 
say I'm incredibly impressed with font handling.  Fonts appear onscreen 
and print out exactly as they do in Windows.  Totally cool.  As for 
Outlook, I'm still using Kmail (which is OK, but I hate the 
addressbook) and KOrganizer, (which is also OK).  I'm committed to 
CXOffice and am happy to wait for the Outlook bugs to get ironed out.

Now, I _must_ add praise to the skies for CodeWeavers tech support.  
These people are incredibly awesome.  The response to problems is 
amazing.  Even as I'm typing this, there is another email from them 
regarding the Word printing issue.  There have been at least 10 emails 
a day back and forth on all the issues.  I have never seen better tech 
support - or any other kind of support - in my life.  I simply cannot 
say enough nice things about the good people at CodeWeavers.

So there you have it.  I consider CXOffice to be well worth it and plan 
to continue to support it.

I hope this was useful to some of you.  Let me know if you want to know 
anything else.

Cheers,

Malke
-- 
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"