Open Office

Today it seems when we talk about the application suite market its appears that the landscape is changing for not only better more efficient programs, but also for those that are low cost or even free….enter Open Office.

After using Open Office it appears that there is such a thing as a free lunch!

Open Office is an all in one office suite that you can download and distribute freely to whomever you want, I know there are some real rubbish apps out there but Open Office takes a completely different line. From their mission statement below that I took from their site, you can see that their intentions are very clear.

“To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.”

Available from OpenOffice.org it is also known as Ooo and has been meant to compete with the Microsoft Office suite. There are plenty of advantages to do with OOo apart from the fact that it’s free, but there are some disadvantages also which I found out for myself.

First things first, MS Office, as far as I know can only run on Windows. I know that if you distribute database projects in Access you can use the run-time environment, but other than that things are not so clear. OOo runs on many operating platforms, the most common being Windows, Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X. Not only this, but it is also available in 65 different languages with communities and volunteers to support those. Sun Microsystems is the primary contributor of code, the application being written in no less than C++.  Way to go!

Like I said, using Open Office is becoming part of a community and some argue that it’s a way of life.

Being an MS Office and an Open Office fan the first thing I noticed about OOo is that the interfaces felt very familiar and really “usable”. Pretty cool stuff huh? It was really easy for me to switch between the two suites having used MS for so long as OOo can read the files that Microsoft Office creates and I am aware that it can read files from other suites such as Oasis.

It offers traditional replacements for Word (Writer), Excel (Calc), Power Point (Impress), Access (Base) as well as 2 other parts called Draw and Math. Also you can use Draw and Writer as a replacement for Desktop Publisher. Overall I found it pretty impressive and quite a pleasure to get on with but all of its uses and features are too vast to mention here and I would need to write a manual. If you would like to find more about them, what OOo does well, and what it doesn’t look here. members.axion.net/~bbyfield/ooo.html.

OOo actually does a whole lot, pretty much like Office and I do have to say that I really love the fact that there are extensions that you can use such as Wiki and Blogger along with others that you can use to add functionality to your user experience but these haven’t really caught on in the same way that Firefox plug-ins and extensions have.

The last time I checked on the OOo website they had won 11 awards for their efforts for producing such a great piece of software.

There are a few things that I hold respectable reservations about and that is that when I have sent attachments to people who are using MS Office they have had problems opening them. I find it a great shame that they don’t offer an email program like Outlook either as this could add real power to their cause. I Use MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition and I have to say that I love the fresh layout and the cool clean lines that it offers a little more than OOo. But that’s just me being fussy. Open Office is a great program and offers a lot to anyone whether they are on a budget or not.

Cost savings compared to MSOffice are phenomenal.

If you wanted MS Office 2007 Pro you should expect to pay around $400 and $500 for the “Enterprise Edition”.

OOo being open source means that you can also contribute towards it. Now this doesn’t mean that you have to be a programming genius either, there are other things that you can do such as marketing, writing, helping users, Quality Assurance, Graphics and Art as well as language communities. All in all there is a lot for you to think about. A great product with a great forthcoming future is my prediction.