Openoffice.org is the free office suite which is part of the open source project sponsored by Sun Microsystems. It has emerged as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org emulates most functionalities of MS Office. The open source technology is available to the developer community through source codes.
OpenOffice.org is compatible with most operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, and Free BSD. The suite includes the following components:
Writer – This is used for text documents and is compatible with most features of Microsoft Word.
Calc – This is the spreadsheet application which allows calculation, charts, and statistical and analytical functions.
Impress – Impress is used to create slide show presentations which include animation, graphics, multimedia, and other features.
Draw – This is used to create drawings and export them to various image formats.
Math – Math is the calculator functionality of the OpenOffice.org suite providing functions and operators to create formulas.
Base – Base is similar to MS Access. Data can be stored in various database file formats.
OpenOffice.org has many benefits. The main advantage of OpenOffice.org is, of course, the fact that it is free. Installing OpenOffice.org is a simple procedure. You can install all components in the suite in a single operation.
Since it is an open source application, OpenOffice.org is programmable. The source code is available to a worldwide community of developers. This means that the application is upgraded more frequently.
The OpenOffice.org suite provides usability features similar to other office suite applications. Its components are mostly compatible with Microsoft products.
You can create Portable Document Format (PDF) documents without installing additional software, such as Adobe Distiller. To convert a document to PDF, just select File > Exportas PDF.
You can directly open a new or an existing file in any application, without opening that particular application. For instance, if you are working in Writer and need to open a spreadsheet, just click on File > New > Spreadsheet.
Another interesting feature in OpenOffice.org is to build web pages using a presentation or a drawing. The file just needs to be exported to HTML format using File > Export.
Any software has its disadvantages. The drawbacks of OpenOffice.org, though few, affect its performance significantly. The main problem that frequent users face is the CPU time and memory usage. OpenOffice.org is much slower compared to Microsoft Office and occupies more memory.
OpenOffice.org also has limited fonts. Though it works across multiple platforms, the necessary fonts need to be installed in the system.
The support for this software is also through the informal user and developer community. This makes it unreliable when you compare it to a paid application.
Finally, the success of any application depends on the comfort level that a user has in working on it. The benefits of OpenOffice.org far outweigh its limitations and it would be worthwhile to give it a try.
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