Microsoft Office is not the only suite of office productivity software on the market — there are a few competitors in this Microsoft-dominated space. One such competitor is OpenOffice.org, an open-source office productivity suite consisting of all the usual suspects: word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and the like.
OpenOffice.org is free open-source software
You read that correctly — OpenOffice.org is free. All of the office productivity tools packaged in the OpenOffice.org suite are available to you at no monetary cost. We’re big fans of open-source software here at Of Zen and Computing, and have written a number of articles that solve problems by using free software. For an extensive explanation of what open-source software is, take a look at “Linux in layman’s terms“. The short form of that explanation is this: open-source software is software whose source code is freely available to everyone, and is distributed under various liberally-conceived copyright licenses. Open-source software is subject to peer-review, and open-source products are often contributed to by teams of highly skilled, highly dedicated volunteer computer programmers.
Getting and installing OpenOffice.org
The OpenOffice.org software suite is distributed via the OpenOffice.org website. Visit the site and click on “Get OpenOffice.og” button. You’ll be taken to the download page, where you should then click on “Download” and select “Windows” from the list of operating systems. From the next page, you can either donate to the OpenOffice.org project, or continue to your download.
Once Open Office finishes downloading, simply double-click on the installer file and Open Office will install itself. When it’s finished, click on the Start button and locate the new Open Office program group.
Components of OpenOffice.org
- OpenOffice.org Base
A database program, equivalent to Microsoft Access.
- OpenOffice.org Calc
A spreadsheet program, equivalent to Microsoft Excel.
- OpenOffice.org Draw
A drawing program, much like the drawing components of Microsoft Word.
- OpenOffice.org Impress
A presentation program, equivalent to Microsoft PowerPoint.
- OpenOffice.org Math
A math equation composer, similar to MS Word’s equation editor.
- OpenOffice.org Writer
A word processor, equivalent to Microsoft Word.
Compatibility
OpenOffice.org is compatible with many of the office documents that you already have. The software works with existing MS Office documents, as well as the Open Document format used by other free office productivity software.
Features
OpenOffice.org is not Microsoft Office, but it is extremely similar. Most of the features that you’re familiar with are available in OpenOffice.org, but of course we can’t promise 100%. OpenOffice.org is an alternative, not a mirror, and therefore it is different in some ways while similar in others. Visit the OpenOffice.org 2 Product Description page for complete information straight from the source.
[tags]OpenOffice.org,Open Office,Office Productivity Software,Software[/tags]
