W. Doug Bolden

Office for the Rest of Us

My introduction to Openoffice.org was actually the older (and I think still around) Star Office. Back when I was a Windows 98 user, I needed a full featured office suite and was not willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for Microsoft's bloated but considered standard Office. A Linux using friend suggested Star Office as an alternative. It was lacking a few features that I needed, but it was free, and had a few features that Office did not, so I stuck with it.

Openoffice.org (yes, the ".org" is part of the name) grew out of the project, being the Open Source half. I migrated to it. Since then, it has grown greatly in its usability. And, best of all, it is several hundreds dollars than the Microsoft alternative (read, it's free).

Free Does NOT Mean Crap

You are not going to find all the features that Office offers, and it eats up slightly more RAM, but you will not be disappointed. Now using the new XML open standards, Openoffice.org allows you to edit files from pretty much any other word processor. It also allows you to save in a literal ton of format. Its cross-platform capabilities far outstrips the usability of Word or any of its Office cousins. And, at base package, you get a wide suite than the one from Microsoft: including a handy drawing package and a nice database suite on top of the standard word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation manager.

Even better, there is a series of export functions that are quite nice, including the ability to export your documents as PDFs (without paying extra for the process like you will on a Windows system) and you can export your presentations into Flash to make it easier to present your works on the web.

Plus you get the standard spell checkers and tools. And, this is big to me, you also get a office suite that doesn't assume that it knows more about your project than you do.

And the Future Is Bright

Now that Google and some other companies are getting into it, the future is even brighter for Openoffice.org. There is supposed to be even more features, a smaller RAM requirement, and increased use of the new XML formats. And it will still be free.

And not crap.