Liberty's Blog

Open Office

I've been using Microsoft Office pretty reluctantly. The IT folks insisted I have it in the day job, and I never thought it was the best. Unfortunatly it became the standard throughout the business community. I not only needed Office to pass documents back and forth to my workmates, but to my customers and venders. I also needed the right version. It became the standard and I must admit, although begrudgingly, its not bad software although very expencive. Word has always seemed pretty powerful and easy to use. Excel always seemed silly to me Excell and Quatro Pro was a lot more natural, but the adition of macros makes it unparralelled in power these days. Access was a good way to make a database but one had better keep a copy backed up. Bundling these guys put the once market leaders of Wordperfect, Quatro Pro and Dbase almost out of bussiness.
Today there is a challenger. Its good, intuitive and plays well with the standard. The challenger is called OpenOffice.org. Yeah, it's spelled out just like a domain name. I use Office 2000 Pro here and Office XP Proat work. Lets say I wouldn't buy it for home its just too expencive. Its recycled, I'm using the old licence from an older install on my work computer. I haven't used Open Office much yet, but it looks to me as though it could replace Microsoft Office for many people.

OPenOffice does have some limmitations. Macro's aren't as powerful. there just aren't as many functions developed for it yet. and of course Microsoft Macros aren't compatable with OpenOffice. Online documatation is good where you can find it, but it is scattered all over the place. Still it can read and write Office Documents, in fact it has built in Acrobat PDF creation. This is full fledge professional software and can easily replace MS Office for most people. especially for at home use.
I can't give it a complete review because I haven't had it more than a couple of days. and it would take me weeks to put it completely through its paces. It does't contain Outlook, but then again there is Thunderbird. The parts it does contain.

• Calc SpreadSheet
• Write Wordprocesser
• Draw A Picture editing program .. Not Gimp by any means.
• Impress Can create Powerpoint type presentation slides.
  
• Base Database uses MySQL i believe.
• Math A Mathmatical Formula thingy

These run on many platforms and many laguages are supported, and thus is what might make it the next standard. The same program can run in on Albanian Mac as well as Chinese Sun Workstation. and its all free. As Doug Thompson from the user list explains:

You may use it in your cafe.
You may use it sipping lattè.
You may use it eating buffet.
You may use it in the shower
(But beware electric power).
You may dissect and fricassee it,
But you needn't ever pay. It
Is absolutely free
To be used by you and me
And he and she, even them, and we
Ask only that you tell us
When the program is rebellious
So the coders and designers
Can make it work just right.
I don't think it's much to ask.
It's quite a simple task:
Just log on to Issue Zilla
And then commence to fill a
Form explaining what you found.

OpenOffice may be got at www.openoffice.org

posted by Liberty @ 6:09 AM