Alternative to MS Outlook

[roberth@gil.com.au]

I am wanting to move to openoffice however i use outlook a great deal. outlook connects to my blackberry easily and i want to do the same thing in openoffice. how do i proceed with this.
regards bob

[FJCC]

OpenOffice.org doesn't have an equivalent to Outlook. There are some threads discussing this, especially this long one. You can also search this forum with the key word Outlook, but use the advanced search and set the search to Display Results and Topics. Thunderbird and Lightning from Mozilla offer email and calendar functions and are free. I don't know anything about how they interact with a Blackberry.

[roberth@gil.com.au]

thanks, for the directions. i wont be making the change either without OOtlOOk and some sync to my blackberry. its just not practical for small business, especially a small engineering business
regards bob

[ccornell]

Nothing stops you from continuing to use Outlook if you've installed OpenOffice.org.

[carusoswi]

Nothing stops you from continuing to use Outlook if you've installed OpenOffice.org.

MS stops you if your old computer has malfunctioned and you had to go out and purchase a new one in a hurry. That happened to my daughter. She had to have a computer, couldn't wait for an online purchase, so purchased a Vista machine on which the pre-installed MSOffice is a trial version. The trial version is about to run out, and, to get a full license with the functionality that she needs will run her nearly $500. I think it is highway robbery.

I am struggling with OO database as a replacement for MS Access (looks to me as though OO is not there yet, developmentally), but I still own Access. She is dead in the water without her Outlook to Blackberry connectivity. We're still searching for an open source solution.

Caruso

[TheGurkha]

I am struggling with OO database as a replacement for MS Access (looks to me as though OO is not there yet, developmentally), but I still own Access.

Base is just a front end to whatever database engine you want to use, it isn't a database engine in its own right. The database engine that comes bundled with OOo is HSQLDB, but you can use Base to connect to another fully-fledged SQL database, such as MySQL, if you want.

[TheGurkha]

This thread describes several ways to link a Blackberry to Thunderbird.

‘Cool Hacks: configure Thunderbird to work with your BlackBerry.