I am the computer tech that was in charge of the migration of Microstation from v8.5 to v8.11.09... (v8i) on XP. This included for the building dept., the use of Aecosim. Since on XP it didn't work with OfficeXP/Excel2002, we prepared a machine on Windows 7, Office/Excel 2010. Due to a momentary shortage in licenses, I considered installing OpenOffice instead. Turned out, it HAD to be Excel. (2010+)
The migration towards Win7/Off2010 is now going ahead, but there might be in the future a situation (budget, OS change, ...) where we have to consider an alternative.
Did anybody ever try using an alternative to MS OFFICE ? If yes, wich one, and how ?