azinoh, I haven't thought about stamp collecting for 50 years, but I'm sure you too remember a little about it. Collectors generally placed their stamps in locations representing the stamps in printed books/binders. I had never heard of Linns either although when young I actually subscribed to a similar weekly newsletter. Anyway it looks like in the modern world, one could print their own 'stamp album' perhaps updating the needed pages yearly or perhaps specifically labeling the acquired stamps only in a notated binder(losing the depressed feeling of having mostly empty or sparsely filled pages). Sounds like a good idea to me. I don't know why one couldn't use microsoft units, but obviously it would be nice to be able to use free programs as well.

If you're writing simple .docs and working simple spreadsheets, OO will be just fine. If you use any advanced features in Office, you may have to relearn how to perform the same operations in OO. If you are sharing files with other Office users, you'll have to remember to save your files in MS format instead of the default Open format. Nothing to lose by giving it a test drive.

pippi, You can use OO Writer to make a list of your plants, highlight the list and then choose Tools>Sort at the top. The default is set to put them in order alphanumerically. Click on OK and your list is alphabetized. I use spreadsheets for my garden and have a different workbook for each bed. To sort a spreadsheet, enter your plant names one by one beneath each other in Column A. Highlight Column A, click on Data at the top, then click on Sort, then click OK. It will alphabetize your plant names. Let me know if I'm not being clear. :)

i finally installed oo 3.1 and it was able to open the spreadsheet. now getting 3.1 and getting it to work, well if you are interested that was a real interesting adventure! in case this helps anyone else i'll copy and paste it here. i posted this at the oo bullentin board, see link below. this is the final resolution: this is going to be difficult to explain but i have solved the problem and i have to admit i am impressed that i was able to do this! here's what i did after i posted this - 1st, instead of going to the web i opted to open an application i had. i clicked on oo 2.4 and it opened a window. from there i clicked on a link to do the download, 150 mb! it took about 45 minutes. but i still had ver 2.4. i realized i had to open the installation file that mozilla was showing me and when i double clicked the downloaded .exe or php file it started the install and i knew i was on the right track. that took a good 20 minutes and i told it to remove the 2.4 stuff. when done the icon for oo 3.1 writer on my task bar did not work! there are now 4 icons the 3.1 version put on my desktop. only the "oo org" 3.1 icon would launch oo and it was 3.1 so i could now use oo. but the other icons for impress, calc, writer and the task bar icon for writer all failed to work, they'd launch a window saying that it could not find "swriter.exe", trust me this is pretty confusing stuff for me! so i could get to oo 3.1 but only using the icon for "oo org" 3.1 so i right clicked the 3 icons that gave the swriter.exe error and looked at the properties. all 3 were going to C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 2.4\program which shouldn't exist as i told it to remove the 2.4 software but it did not put the correct target address for the 3.1 programs and i recognized this as screwy. i looked at the properties for the 1 icon that would launch oo 3.1 and the target was exactly the same as the 3 icon's targets that were 2.4 but it had 3 in the address - C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 3\program\swriter.exe so i changed the target in the icons that generated the can't find swriter.exe error. by doing that the 3 icons on the desktop went from being a white backround to bright colors and a larger icon! low and behold when i click on those 3 and the icon for the writer on the task bar each one launches the correct software! like i said, i am impressed i found this and was able to fix it, i can't imagine anyone would figure this out it just seems too cryptic! heck i even was able to open the spread sheet that started all this! i hate messing with stuff, i want it to work. i am not all that pc literate and i worry that if i change anything i'll mess something up. i have to admit this was NOT easy to do. oo does NOT provide a correct download/installation. if this happened to me it must be happening to everyone. so not only did this process fail to remove some 2.4 files but it loaded the incorrect target address for 3 icons (using the C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice.org 2.4\program\swriter.exe address)! makes me wonder..... Here is a link that might be useful: open office setup trouble shooting forum