by Kent Callison
posted July 28, 2003
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Supported OS: Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP; Mac OS X (10.2 or better)
Where to Buy: www.openoffice.org
Price: Free
If you are like 90% of the computer users in corporate America you are a Microsoft Office devotee. Since 1997, Microsoft has clobbered office suites like Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 in the ring of universal compatibility. A new contender has entered the ring, however, and this may be the Great "Write" Hope!
Open Office is an open-source program that was originally developed by Sun Microsystems and sold under the title Sun Office. Today a group of developers has taken that original code and created an incredibly reliable, affordable and venerable opponent to the reigning "King of the Ring."
The first thing you should know about Open Office is that it is free. That's right--there is no licensing fee for the software. You can download as many copies as you like and install it on as many machines as you like. Those of you who figure the annual software budget are getting excited already. Imagine NOT buying the latest Microsoft Office upgrade for 300 users at a cost of $300 a pop! Maybe the CFO will send that $90,000 bucks your way in the form of a bonus...well, you can hope anyway.
The second thing you should know about Open Office is that it is so similar to Microsoft's giant you may not even notice you switched. The interface looks and feels the same, the files can be saved in Microsoft Word, Excel, Access and Power Point format. It can even open and read your existing Office files.
I will admit, I was skeptical. I have been using Billy Boy's suite of tools for a long time. I have spent thousands of dollars upgrading to the newest versions. Surely this was too good to be true. It wasn't. The words got written, the numbers got crunched and I made a lasting impact on my audience with yet another stellar presentation. Not bad for free software. So let's take a closer look at the number one contender.
The number one used component of Microsoft Office is Word. You will no doubt find yourself using the Open Office equivalent, Writer, just as often. Writer is a full featured word processor complete with spell checker, thesaurus, outline and list capabilities and all the other standard elements. It supports tables, inserted graphics and hypertext links just like Word. In fact, the only thing I didn't find in Writer was a "Word Count" option. This probably means nothing to most users, but for those of us who write for a living, every word counts.
If you are convinced that life in the financial world would cease to exist without Excel, take heart. Calc is a stunning replication of the ever popular spreadsheet program. You can use your familiar formulas and calculations you learned back in Excel 101, or you can ditch them for more understandable real-english commands like ADD, TOTAL, and AVERAGE. This is due to the XML-source code upon which Open Office is written. Again, you can open, edit and save all existing Excel files. One nice thing is if you decide to save them in Open Office format, they will become smaller--once again, thanks to XML. This is a great help if you are trying to conserve precious gigabytes on your hard drive.
Open Office includes a graphic design package called Draw and a presentation component called Impress. While Impress is compatible with all Power Point file formats, it does not have the same razzle dazzle as the latest version of Power Point. Some of the animations and transitions in Power Point XP do not carry over into Impress. And, if you have become accustomed to the interface and design structure of Power Point, you may struggle a bit to overcome some habits. However, I found Impress to be a suitable replacement for Power Point for all of my basic presentation needs. You can create custom slides and backgrounds or use one of the many templates included. If you are picky about your slides--having all your images line up and your titles perfectly aligned--Impress won't let you down. It offers numerous style sheets and auto layout options.
By now you are probably ready to point your web browser to OpenOffice.org to download your copy. Before you uninstall Microsoft Office, however, you should be aware of a few things:
1) There is no information manager like Outlook included in Open Office. If you depend on Outlook for your e-mail, contacts and appointments you will have to keep using that component of MS Office. The developers are working on a PIM for the next release.
2) While I am a big fan of open-source (read: free) software, I am not thrilled about the idea of little to no tech support. I did not encounter any issues with the installation or operation of this software, but if I had, my only option was to go online and read through a bunch of forums authored by developer types. I don't know if you have ever read those forums, but they can make a transcript of Nightline seem like a John Grisham novel. If you depend on live telephone support, stick with Microsoft.
3) The default setting for Open Office is to take hostage all of your existing MS Office files. So, the next time you open your department's annual budget file, it will call upon Open Office to display the numbers. Make sure to deselect this option during the install if that bothers you. If you decide you don't care for the software and uninstall it later, it will free those files and let them go back home to Bill Gates easy enough.
Believe it or not, if you are tired of trying to keep up with Microsoft's version upgrades you finally have a real option. Open Office reads, writes and edits all MS Office formats. It sports a familiar, albeit boring, interface that most users will take to quickly. Best of all, the software is free. If you are a small business owner struggling to choke down the price of Microsoft software, you will adore Open Office.
While the suits in Redmond, Washington probably aren't shaking in their trunks just yet, this latest opponent to their long standing title of Office supremacy may be the first to go the distance. With 99.99% compatibility, familiar interface and free licensing, you owe it to yourself to jump in the ring. Ding, Round One!
) Kent Callison |
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