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The suite comes with an excellent word processor called Writer. It's a lot like Microsoft Word and even has fully programmable macros.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Open Source software suite is a free replacement for many parts of Microsoft Office


May 26, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   Microsoft Office is the standard Windows software for writing and for many other functions in offices, schools and homes. It's very expensive - many hundreds of dollars, even at severe discounts - and comes with restrictions that sometimes keep users from installing one copy on more than one computer.
   But you now have a way around both these problems. An Open Source (in other words, free) office suite highly compatible with Microsoft Office has just been introduced. I've been using it for a few weeks and am very impressed. I've even stopped using Microsoft Word in favor of the new, free Word-compatible word processor in the new office suite.
   The new software is called OpenOffice.org. It's free as in air, not as in demoware or advertising-supported software. Download it from www.openoffice.org. You get OpenOffice.org in a single, very large installation file. It will take a while to download. Save the installation file so you can change the setup at any time. (My advice: Install just the word processor and its support files until you feel confident that you want to use more of OpenOffice.org. Then run the installation program that you saved - are you listening? - and install other parts.)
   OpenOffice.org - the "org" suffix is part of the name of the software, odd as that seems -- is available right now for Windows, Linux and the Sun Solaris operating systems. A version for Apple's Unix-based OS X operating system is undergoing early tests, but no one is saying when it will be ready.
   The suite comes with an excellent word processor called Writer. It's a lot like Microsoft Word and even has fully programmable macros. If you're not a whiz at Word, you might take to Writer right away. Word mavens probably will have a harder time. A nice touch is the way Writer uses the many of the same familiar keystrokes and menu locations as Word.
   Writer is able to work with Microsoft Word documents easily. You can even make Word's "DOC" document format the default for OpenOffice.org Writer. OpenOffice.org complains when you do that, insisting that its own format is better, but you can safely ignore the warnings in most cases.
   You also get Calc, a spreadsheet program that works like Microsoft Excel. It also handles Excel documents easily, both opening them and, if needed, saving in Excel's own format. Also included are a program called Present for creating PowerPoint-like presentations, and it, too, can deal easily with PowerPoint documents. The only other program in the suite is Draw, a graphics program compatible with Microsoft's program of the same name.
   What you do not get as part of OpenOffice.org is significant. There is no Microsoft Access-compatible software - if you need Access, you need Microsoft Office - and there's no equivalent of Microsoft Outlook. (Don't confuse Outlook with Outlook Express. Outlook is a powerful mail program integrated with a contact manager, scheduler and data manager.)
   OpenOffice.org is the latest of many Open Source projects. The best known include the Linux operating system and the Apache Web server. Open Source software is free to use and free to distribute. You're also free to change the code as long as you allow others to change what you've done.
   The obvious advantage to Open Source software is that it costs nothing. But it also lacks many of the annoyances of closed source software such as Microsoft Office. You can install a single copy of an Open Source program on any number of computers, for example. Open Source software won't "phone home" the way some commercial programs, such as Microsoft Office XP, do in order to check with headquarters to make sure you aren't doing something "wrong."
   What might not be so obvious, however, is the relative safety of software such as OpenOffice.org. Programmers are able to fix bugs and close security gaps very quickly. Because anyone is able to view the code, bugs and other lapses aren't likely to remain hidden even if they do slip into the program.
   Support is sometimes described as the main reason companies question the value of Open Source software. In many cases, however, the free support offered in public newsgroups and e-mail lists is more helpful than the pay-before-you-go support supplied by Microsoft. And this kind of cost accounting often neglects the additional toll of frustration; paying for support for software that is unsafe and insecure does not guarantee that Microsoft will make it safe and secure. It merely adds to the frustration users feel when they try to get Microsoft to respond.