resurrectionsong

March 27, 2004

Review: OpenOffice 1.1

The laptop I purchased last year had Office 2000 installed, but no original program disks. Since I would rather use legally acquired software, I decided to try out OpenOffice 1.1 since the price was right around what I was looking for: free.

I have to say that I'm extremely happy with it so far. The word processing application is a good replacement for Word 2000. For a person who needs a good, full-featured word processor, this really can't be beat. It has most of the features of Word 2000 and comes for free. It's quick, it's stable, and it follows the same interface standards that users are accustomed to with Microsoft Products. The one area that it fell a little short was in its spell check, which is far less complete and useful in comparison to its Word counterpart.

The drawing application is nearly useless, as is the HTML application. Luckily, being a little design geek, I don't need second (or third or fourth) tier apps for graphics or HTML formatting. I also, generally, don't concern myself with presentation software (like PowerPoint), as there is very little attractive or useful to me about a PowerPoint presentation. What OpenOffice has to fill this slot seems to my uncritical eye to be as useful as PowerPoint, although it has less in the way of pre-installed templates and graphics. I have no doubt that it would be easy enough to find more templates for the application, though.

The final chunk of the OpenOffice 1.1 suite is the spreadsheet software. Again, I'm just a casual user of Excel, so my needs are simple. OpenOffice's app works just fine for me.

For a casual user of something like Microsoft's Office suite, it seems almost insane to pay the money that it costs for the Microsoft product when a freeware app exists. The need for tech support or all the extras that come with the price tag of Office 2000 are little needed for someone like me. Basic spreadsheet use and the regular use of a word processor for short documents are pretty much as far as my needs extend—and OpenOffice 1.1 more than fills those needs.

Since it saves documents in various formats, including Word and PowerPoint, there is no real difficulty in sharing information. I saw no problems with documents that I exported, although, as my documents tend to be somewhat simple, it would be unfair to say that the export features are perfect. What would be fair to say is that it worked extremely well for me.

If Microsoft's Office suite is the bar that other companies try to reach, then OpenOffice comes reasonably close to perfection. On features and usefulness, it ranks a B+ to Office's A+. On affordability and value, it's an A+ to Office's B. If you are a hardcore user of all of Office's applications and functionality, it's probably worth the money. For the rest of us, the low cost should make OpenOffice an obvious choice, even given the large download.

Posted by zombyboy at March 27, 2004 01:34 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Careful with that "freeware" term, ZB, you'll get some Free Software zealot's panties in a twist.

The term "freeware", is generally used to refer to a program which is only "Free as in beer", not "Free as in speech". For a description, see Philosophy of the GNU Project.

For example, it is entirely possible to publish a binary-only distribution of a piece of software, charging nothing for it, and keep the source code a secret. This is the "Free as in beer" position, and referes only to price.

The "Free as in speech" position implies the much higher concept of liberty. Here's a snippet from the Openoffice.org license page:

You can freely modify, extend, and improve the OpenOffice.org source code. The only question is whether or not you must provide the source code and contribute modifications to the community. The GPL and SISSL licenses allow different ranges of flexibility in this regard, but in the end, regardless of the license used, any and all incompatible changes must be published openly.

That's not something you can do with just any old piece of "freeware".

I'm glad to hear, though, that you've found Openoffice.org useful for word processing and spreadsheets. I've found various aspects of it to be clunky at times, but for most tasks, it does indeed fit the bill.

Maybe one day you'll give The GIMP a try.

Posted by: jed at March 27, 2004 05:26 PM

I use OpenOffice at work - we have a limited number of licenses for Microsoft Office, so I was testing to see if OpenOffice would work in a mixed environment. So far, it's handled everything that others have generated with Office, as well as what customers have sent to me.

I'd have put it on my new laptop, but it came with Office already installed.

I do intend to put AVG on the laptop, though ... I've had it a week, and Norton is already prompting me to renew.

Posted by: wheels at March 27, 2004 06:59 PM

I actually did try GIMP. I'm actually a graphic desinger for a living, though, and found that it simply didn't fit my needs. It's got a much more difficult interface to go with it's pretty impressive features. It also wasn't nearly as stable or quick when dealing with large files--the largest single image I've worked on clocked in at a little more than one gig of hard drive space and took nearly seven gigs of scratch disk while I was working on it. GIMP is sort of like OpenOffice--good for casual users but not quite ready for prime time. For someone like me, Photoshop is really a must.

I think I am going to be happy with OpenOffice, though. The one thing that I do hope that they improve is the spell check.

Posted by: zombyboy at March 28, 2004 02:56 AM

Funny you should post this, I was just looking for something for my work computer, and I didn't want to pay Micro$oft prices. So this morning I downloaded OpenOffice. Looks good so far.

Posted by: Walter at March 28, 2004 10:47 AM

Damn, my timing is good...

Another low cost option is StarOffice. I haven't tried it, but it's based on OpenOffice with some extra functionality. I think the whole suite costs a hundred bucks, but I didn't even want to spend that much.

If you find that OpenOffice is lacking, you can always check out StarOffice.com to see if the added functionality would be worth the extra cost to you.

So, does this count as my good deed of the week?

Posted by: zombyboy at March 28, 2004 11:25 AM

I have OpenOffice, though I've gone back to M$-Office for casual use.

I do like the fact that with OO I can create PDF documents without having to pay for Adobe Acrobat.

Now, if I ever actually need to create PDF documents, I'm all set...

Posted by: McGehee at March 28, 2004 09:41 PM

Yeah, The GIMP can be a bit clunky at times. But part of that is, I think, due to user-supplied addons that might not have been tested quite as thoroughly as they should be. The user interface takes some getting used to as well -- at least it did for me, since my previous experience was mostly with Corel PhotoPaint.

I've had some huge files open in The GIMP. Don't know the exact sizes -- couple of gigs or so. But I doubt I stress the program the way you would. I just play around with things.

I've read that there are professional types who use it. The number 1 problem I've heard of, from that point of view, is lack of CMYK support. I think that's coming though.

Posted by: jed at March 29, 2004 11:09 AM

No matter how hard I tried,
I could find no reason for people to create software and then give it out for free.
It costs hell of time to develop something, why not sell it?
There must be some reason.
Brian

Posted by: Brian at April 10, 2004 05:30 PM

Reason to create software for free? Not everybody is motivated by money. Some have higher ideals, like the good of all. Is that so hard to understand?

Posted by: Caer at August 10, 2004 03:37 AM