I got this in an email from a friend. Awfully nice of him to write everything up like this... but I'm not sure how I'd use it.
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Symphony is an open source spreadsheet, document, and spreadsheet application.
This application can do all of the functionality that a home user will need - without the cost of MS Office.
The link to the Symphony download is symphony.lotus.com/softwa.../home.jspa
I downloaded Symphony last night and thought I would pass on a
few comments on Symphony and MS Vista.
The Symphony download is 175 MB so it takes awhile to download.
Symphony needs 500 MB of disk space and 512 MB RAM.
Things I liked about Symphony in my short usage time
It is one application and one window - not three separate
applications like MS Office
Opening multiple documents/spreadsheets/presentations appear as tabs
in the one window instead of separate instances like Word or Excel.
Tabs make it extremely easy to navigate between two Excel
spreadsheets - this is so much better than Excel.
The tabs in Symphony can be from different applications (I had one
Symphony window open with two Word documents and one spreadsheet open
as tabs in the one window).
Symphony has a 'properties' area on the right side of the window that
displays all of the properties for a spreadsheet cell or word
document (in place of the 'format' menu option in MS applications.
Symphony can save documents as .pdf files.
Symphony spreadsheet has the same basic functionality as MS Excel.
Functionality missing from Symphony
It only imports files from MS Office applications and does not work
with MS Works files (they need to be opened in MS Office and saved as
an MS Office file type).
The Symphony document function could not correctly open a MS Word
document that included a letter and an envelope.
I did not check Symphony spreadsheet to see if it has the ability to do
VBA macros. I would doubt that it does.
In testing out Symphony on a Vista Home machine, I found an annoyance in
Vista.
You cannot change file extension in Vista (at least I could not find
a way last night).
I had a MS Works spreadsheet (.xlr extension) that had been
updated in trial version of MS Excel 2007 and saved as an Excel
2007 document. However, Vista never changed the file extension to
.xls. This meant that Symphony would not load this file since it
thought it was a Works file. I tried to change the extension in
Windows Explorer but the 'rename' function no longer allows you to
change the extension. Vista allows you to change the file
association but you have to know the executable name.
To change the extension, I copied the file to a flash drive and
viewed the file on an XP machine and renamed the file to change
the extension. I reloaded the file to the Vista machine and
Symphony was then able to process the file ok.
------
Symphony is an open source spreadsheet, document, and spreadsheet application.
This application can do all of the functionality that a home user will need - without the cost of MS Office.
The link to the Symphony download is symphony.lotus.com/softwa.../home.jspa
I downloaded Symphony last night and thought I would pass on a
few comments on Symphony and MS Vista.
The Symphony download is 175 MB so it takes awhile to download.
Symphony needs 500 MB of disk space and 512 MB RAM.
Things I liked about Symphony in my short usage time
It is one application and one window - not three separate
applications like MS Office
Opening multiple documents/spreadsheets/presentations appear as tabs
in the one window instead of separate instances like Word or Excel.
Tabs make it extremely easy to navigate between two Excel
spreadsheets - this is so much better than Excel.
The tabs in Symphony can be from different applications (I had one
Symphony window open with two Word documents and one spreadsheet open
as tabs in the one window).
Symphony has a 'properties' area on the right side of the window that
displays all of the properties for a spreadsheet cell or word
document (in place of the 'format' menu option in MS applications.
Symphony can save documents as .pdf files.
Symphony spreadsheet has the same basic functionality as MS Excel.
Functionality missing from Symphony
It only imports files from MS Office applications and does not work
with MS Works files (they need to be opened in MS Office and saved as
an MS Office file type).
The Symphony document function could not correctly open a MS Word
document that included a letter and an envelope.
I did not check Symphony spreadsheet to see if it has the ability to do
VBA macros. I would doubt that it does.
In testing out Symphony on a Vista Home machine, I found an annoyance in
Vista.
You cannot change file extension in Vista (at least I could not find
a way last night).
I had a MS Works spreadsheet (.xlr extension) that had been
updated in trial version of MS Excel 2007 and saved as an Excel
2007 document. However, Vista never changed the file extension to
.xls. This meant that Symphony would not load this file since it
thought it was a Works file. I tried to change the extension in
Windows Explorer but the 'rename' function no longer allows you to
change the extension. Vista allows you to change the file
association but you have to know the executable name.
To change the extension, I copied the file to a flash drive and
viewed the file on an XP machine and renamed the file to change
the extension. I reloaded the file to the Vista machine and
Symphony was then able to process the file ok.







