I have already done my Christmas shopping for myself . 😀

I recently lost my Kodak Camera C360 with batteries and New 2GB SD ram card… so with the holidays approaching, and no way to take pictures for my family or my blog readers or for my students, I was faced with a difficult choice: keep looking or give up and buy a new one!

Today, I’m announcing that for me Christmas has come early : with my purchase of a Panasonic Lumix DMC. I’d have used a Panasonic coupon code to buy one from CouponChief.com, but I was dumb. I didn’t really think about doing that. Instead I ran out to the store, asked an attendant who wasn’t so well informed, didn’t manage to get extra batteries, either; and didn’t get a discount!

Instead, I could have got a FREE SDRam card with 256MB or 512MB of space for those shots. Or I could have checked out the Sony Store with the Sony deals and got upto 15% off some deals on their camera products.

Consider that I paid nearly $300 for my camera, either of these deals would have been quite sweet. In one case, I might have saved nearly $45 for use on other presents! So, if you are a cautious spender at Christmas, then checking out CouponChief before swiping might be a good way to ease your Christmas burden, find good presents, and all without leaving your computer!

On a trip to Costco, I came across a really good deal for a SanDisk Cruzer^{®} Micro 4GB. I have always been using two or sometimes three computers, so my data was always on the wrong computer. I am already a PortableApps user, so switching to U3 was easy.

I’ve linked directly to the item on SanDisk’s page for you to have a look at. I also managed to get it at a very good price, approximately $45.00.

It has 4GB of space, though in practice, with the programs installed it works out at a lot less. I added a number of U3 compatible programs for convenience, including Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice. There were a couple of neat features, including the internal links to the SanDisk download center and the internal browser that made installing a number of extra applications very simple.

OK, when you connect your Cruzer, you get the loading information as usual, but then this little box appears on the bottom right of your desktop. Clicking on the screen loads the Cruzer Start Menu (very much like the regular Start Menu), in which you will find all the programs loaded on the USB drive.

In the drive below, you’ll see that I have loaded a number of popular programs onto my Cruzer, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, and OpenOffice. All of these programs are available from the U3 website browser. To access this click on the words, “Add Programs” and you can be taken to the U3 store or download central, which I’m including below.

There is just one thing missing in all of the programs that I can’t find, that’s a blogging client, apart form ScribeFire which runs in FF. Odd thing is, I’d have thought it would be one of the first things to be included.

I haven’t made much use of the device yet, as my PC at school ONLY is Windows 98SE, and I haven’t upgraded it. I can never find the time to do that! But I’d better…

For those dedicated Ooo users, Version 2.3 is now out. You can pretty much try it out, even if you don’t keep it! It installs simply, and removes simply. Even on Windows 98se it doesn’t need a reboot usually. I wish I could say that of most other software.

Anyway, OpenOffice.org says:

OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it.

Plus: It is only with 2.3 that users can make full use of our growing extensions library.

It really is available on many platforms from Win32 to Mac to some very esoteric platforms (including Solaris). I do think that Ooo isn’t yet COMPELLLING as software, but it is developing some characteristics that are making its adoption in the future a certainty.

Why? Well, compared to Microsoft’s product, it offers a number of advantages:

• 1. it’s got a growing base of user components (intriguing)… just like Firefox at version 1.0+, it was the components as much as anything else that drove adoption.
• 2. it’s got a wide userbase, with platforms supported from Windows 98 to Linux to … and a wide range of language options.
• 3. it’s a full user suite including a database (unlike many versions of Office proper).
• 4. its upgrade cycle seems to be speeding up, too.
• 5. early niggles have gone, but there are some niggles like setting default pages and some screen refreshes don’t play well.
• 6. it doesn’t use MS’s new proprietary document formats.

Though it is quite a jump from lower end office applications like MS Works, or Apple Works, and there are few ways to import text directly from some of these alternatives. For example, to get text from Works, you first have to save it as an RTF file or HTML or even a DOC.

Many companies have already adopted it, as has ours. We’ve got five operational computers, but we only use MS Office on two systems, as we still run Win98se on two ‘old’ systems. Eventually, that will be reduced to one. Then zero when the oldest PC dies.

We will not purchase new copies of Office at all. Integration and standardized systems make things much easier, but CDs with serial numbers, activation, and the continual problems with the Genuine Advantage program really distract from the point of buying software: to get the job done!

You can find out more information from the Wikipedia pages on OpenOffice as well as the comparison of Office Software page.

What is your attitude ot OpenOffice vs. M$Office?