- by Jim Edwards

© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
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Anyone who ever priced the Microsoft Office Suite knows it
represents a significant investment.

A quick check of the CompUSA.com website shows Microsoft
Office Standard costs $399 and Microsoft Office Professional
will set you back $449. Now, this doesn’t discount the value
of the software.

In fact, the functionality in MS Office represents the true
workhorse of home and small business computing, namely: word
processing (Word), spreadsheets (Excel), presentations
(PowerPoint), and desktop database applications (Access).

However, with the cost for such functionality at a premium,
it comes as no surprise that a viable alternative emerged to
challenge Microsoft’s position atop the office application
market.

OpenOffice.org offers a suite of office software
applications free to download for anyone with a computer,
including PC’s operating with Windows or Linux.

Open Office also offers a free version for Macintosh
computers.

Open Office offers its software freely to anyone who wants
to download it.

Their all-volunteer organization, sponsored in large part by
Sun Microsystems, operates with the noble goal of making
productivity software available worldwide in 36 languages,
particularly to economies that simply can’t afford the cost
of other office solutions.

The Open Office software publishes in the Open Document
Format to make data universally available (instead of using
proprietary file formats that, for instance, make it hard to
share between Microsoft Word and Word Perfect).

Open Office contains several main components, each of which
help the user with specific tasks.

Writer - This software offers a full-featured word-
processing program enabling the user to type letters,
brochures, faxes, even entire books. No matter what you need
to type, this program lets you do it. It also offers such
features as spell check, auto-correction, and thesaurus.

Calc - Calc offers a spreadsheet program enabling the user
to create cells containing text or digits, execute simple
and complex calculations, database functions, and more. Calc
is perfect for accounting spreadsheets, inventory and more.

Impress - Impress enables the user to create “slideshow”
presentations containing text and images for use in sales or
group presentations. Impress also allows the user to create
impressive slide transition effects and eye-catching
animation.

Draw - Draw gives the user the ability to create simple to
complex drawings using vector graphics. Users can create
drawings by hand, or incorporate an array of existing
shapes, arrows, lines and other graphics.

Though it does represent an excellent alternative to
expensive office software suites, Open Office is not without
a few drawbacks.

Since they make the software available free of charge, tech
support for the free version only lasts 30 days. Also, by
its nature, the software is a “work in progress.”

As such, you will find bugs periodically that should get
reported to the Open Office website so they can fix them.

However, despite these drawbacks, Open Office software rates
a “must look” if you need word processing, spreadsheets and
other capabilities we’ve naturally come to associate with
home and small business computing.

–
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
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