The industry standard office suite is Microsoft
Office which can cost from $120 to over $500. The alternative is Free
OpenOffice a full office suite.
Yes, Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Drawing programs and
more all for free! No I'm not crazy, but you are right to be skeptical.
It's not "Ad-ware", it's not "Spyware", it's not full of problems and
it really is free. OpenOffice Suite has great support and in program
help. I believe OpenOffice has created an equal, or better product than
the expensive alternative. OpenOffice is created by "Hackers". These
are not the criminals but the free minded creators of the Internet
world. You can download OpenOffice and if interested you can get the
source code also. This is what keeps OpenOffice free. The source code
is the programming code that makes the program work. With the source
code you can alter the program, rename it and sell it as yours. Now
when I first heard this I thought oh no! How can I trust a program that
anyone can alter. That is where OpenOffice.org comes in. For changes to
carry the name OpenOffice the changes must be approved by them. This
causes the program to be very stable and for proper changes,
enhancements, improvements and corrections to come out very quickly. If
you find a problem you have the option of emailing the OpenOffice team
and inform them of the problem. This is desired by them so they can get
fixes done quickly.
OpenOffice currently supports Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris,
Mac OS X, and FreeBSD operating systems / platforms. System
Requirements vary according to the type of system / platform you use.
For this review I will cover the requirements for Windows. Which are
Microsoft Windows 98, ME, NT (Service Pack 6 or higher), 2000 or XP
(Service Pack 1 or 2) Pentium compatible PC, 64 MB RAM, 250 MB
available hard disk space for the current version of OpenOffice Suite
1.1.3. The downloaded program is large 45 MB. If this is too large for
your connection you can order a CD from too many websites to list them
all, but here are a couple like "eBay" for 3.99 including shipping or
"Amazon.com Z Shop" which includes shipping, Tutorial Flash Movie and
Writer Tutorial Quicktime Movie for $8.95 to $35.95. Their more
expensive deals include 1 year email and online support. I don't think
this support is much of an offer since OpenOffice.org offers free
Community Support and the OpenOffice Forum is free.
The features of OpenOffice are:
Write (Text Documents) is almost just like MS Word, with all the bells
and whistles. You can type in all your text with colors, fonts and
graphics, create tables and all that neat stuff. It has a dictionary,
thesaurus, mailmerging and bibliographical references. You can create
your own documents in PDF (Portable Document Format) and use many auto
features like styles, spelling, formatting, auto-complete and generate
table of contents or indexing terms among other things. If you find
something that you don't understand then you can click on help. The
help system is absolutely packed with information and is available in
all features.
Calc (Spreadsheets), I am not big in the area of finance but I use the
spreadsheet to layout my budget. A spreadsheet is like electronic paper
with rows and columns making up cells in which you put content. Your
input can control how page should look and behave along with all the
numbers and formulas while the computer takes care of all the math.
Create charts, graphs, or stunning cash flow projections, with a few
simple clicks of the mouse. Also it seems to have full compatibility
(read/write) with MS Excel.
Draw works from a quick sketch to a complex plan, giving you the tools
to communicate with graphics and diagrams or create Flash. Use Smart
connectors make short work of flowcharts, organization charts, network
diagrams, etc. Define your own 'glue points' for connectors to 'stick'
to like in flow charts. You can import graphics from all common formats
(including BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and WMF). You can export the
drawings you create as Macromedia Flash SFW, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG and
many other formats. Draw comes with several scalable 3D images,
backgrounds, rulers (lines), buttons and bullets.
Impress (Presentations), common uses for these type of programs are for
presenting new products or ideas, but you could use it for a reunion,
birthday, anniversary or training slideshow. Creating sequences of
graphics and text, on "slides" lets you control the slideshow and the
look, of every presentation can be totally different. Impress contains
wizards to help you get started.
It is so easy to make Labels and Business Cards. It has quick and easy
set-up templets from the tabs for labels, business cards and such, for
popular precut pages like Avery.
I've never had OpenOffice crash in the 2 years I have used it so I must say it is a very stable program.
The bottom line is That OpenOffice Suite is a great program containing
loads of features (more than are covered here), that works well for
home or office with a price that will never be beat.
About the Author:
DonEc is the designer, creator and owner of Best Web Stop
(bestwebstop.net). He has been working with computers since 1974 and
been creating websites with WYSIWYG non-HTML web programs since 1992.
He is retired and provides No Cost WebSite instruction via Best Web
Stop as a service to people that want to have a totally free, no cost
presence on the web or just want to avoid learning HTML. In some cases
he has been known to build sites for a small fee if asked. However he
requires the owner of the site to learn how to create a site so they
can maintain the site themselves.
Copy and/or reproduction of this article is allowed as long as it is
not altered in any way and the section "About the author" is kept with
the article including these instructions. Article Copyright © 2004
by DonEc
