I have been hearing rumblings around the office lately about
OpenOffice, the multilingual, multiplatform, FREE office suite. One of my coworkers was a beta tester for Excel 2007, and had several complaints. He was telling me that everyone should be using OpenOffice anyway, including our company. I was suspicious of his enthusiasm and decided to do a little bit of research to find out the whole story.
For those of you who are not familiar with OpenOffice, it is an office suite (like Microsoft Office) that utilizes open source code. Open source means that source code is made public so that any programmer or layperson who can write code can copy, fix or redistribute the open source material.
The suite is comprised of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (multimedia presentations), Draw (graphics), Base (database manipulator), and Math (formulas and equations with graphic user interface).
OpenOffice is multiplatform, which means there are versions available for any of the following platforms: MS Windows 98-Vista, Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X and Free BSD. The software can open and save MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. You can legally share the software with anyone you want and the license is neutral, meaning that it is not build on any one style or interface. And did I mention IT’S FREE! - that is my favorite part.
If you're like me, you’re wondering, what’s the drawback? I scoured the message boards looking for the fatal OpenOffice flaw – but what I found was overwhelmingly positive feedback.
The only negative feedback I found was a posting on
InfoWorld's website which highlighted a valid point - the layperson who is not a programmer or code writer will not be able to fix the many bugs that OpenOffice has, and professional programmers who have the skills may not have the time or interest to mess around with the project. The writer of this particular post was subsequently attacked by the OpenOffice-loving public, who highlighted that when MS Office was first released that it was bug-laden.
I guess the only way for me to truly find out is to start using the product, which is something I plan to do, since (have I mentioned?) it’s FREE!
To be continued...
Comments
The only issue I found with
The only issue I found with Open Office when I tried it out last year, was the issue of making Templates. In a meduim to large Law office for example, templates are a very important part of the uniformity of forms and stationery. Otherwise, I found the OpenOffice package to be a wonderful responsive piece of software, and I found it to be a little less "klunky" in it's operation than MS Office.
My prediction.. Microsoft had it's peak, and it's now sliding down the other side of the mountain.