After years of waiting by its supporters,
the OpenOffice.org suite has finally hit the magic version 2.0. Designed
as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org provides a
word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tools, and drawing program.
New in version 2.0 is a database to let you create simple applications
and data-entry forms, similar to Microsoft's Access database. The 2.0
version also supports the OpenDocument format, or ODF, described in this
space last month.
The main changes, though, come in the form of
dramatic performance and usability improvements. The 2.0 release is
truly far better than the older 1.x releases.
Available at
www.openoffice.org, the office suite runs on a variety of platforms,
including Linux and Windows. (The funny .org at the end of the name
exists because another organization owns the trademark on OpenOffice.)
The office suite runs on Mac OS X as well, but as of now requires you to
run the X Window System, X11.app.
I prefer a variant called NeoOffice/J, which combines the OpenOffice.org
suite with a nice Macintosh user interface.
The cross-platform
support is really handy, and it can help your organization migrate to
Linux. For example, you can migrate all your Windows users from
Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, remaining on Windows. Later, you can
migrate users to Linux. This gives you more efficient support for older
PCs, as well as freedom from the constant spate of malware attacking
Windows systems. Linux isn't perfect, but it starts from a more secure
base than Windows.
The main OpenOffice.org applications--Writer,
Calc, and Impress--work as well as if not better than Microsoft's Word,
Excel, and PowerPoint. With the 2.0 release, the always-important
compatibility with Microsoft's file formats has been improved by quite a
bit.
Furthermore, you should be able to load up very complicated
documents that were originally created with Microsoft Office. That
wasn't always true in the past, especially with complicated PowerPoint
presentations. OpenOffice.org Draw adds on vector-drawing capabilities
and OpenOffice.org Base provides a more solid foundation for your data
than Access.
You may still experience problems with certain
documents, though. Even so, if you have tried OpenOffice.org in the past
and rejected it, the suite is worth a second look at the 2.0
release.
As with Microsoft Office, the OpenOffice.org suite
includes a version of the BASIC programming language, specially tailored
for writing add-ons to the office suite. This is very similar to
Microsoft's Visual Basic for Applications, or VBA. OpenOffice.org
includes a complete development environment built into the
suite.
To aid usability, the entire OpenOffice.org suite includes
a number of small enhancements. It should now be easier than in previous
releases for users to migrate from Microsoft's products. General usage
of OpenOffice.org features is better as well.
The OpenOffice.org
suite is free. In addition, you can download and work with the suite's
source code. OpenOffice.org is available under the LGPL
license.
StarOffice, a commercialized version of the
OpenOffice.org suite, might be worth a look if your organization wants
product support. For example, many companies would prefer to purchase
support rather than use a free tool. Now at version 8, StarOffice comes from Sun, which
purchased the original product before making the the source code
available for free. StarOffice includes a number of features beyond that
of the OpenOffice.org suite. In addition, it has enterprise-level
support from Sun Microsystems. --Eric Foster-Johnson
