OpenOffice Productivity Suite

Found in

Database management and server software for storing large amounts of information.

Desktop publishing and computer graphics editors.

Presentation software for multimedia presentations, slideshows, visual aids, and lectures.

Spreadsheets for managing grids of data, creating charts, and performing calculations, similar to Excel.

Word processors and text document editors.

OpenOffice is Completely Free

OpenOffice is a must-have replacement for MS Office. While MS Office can cost several hundred dollars, OpenOffice is completely free for personal or business use by anyone. There isn't a different version that costs more or has more features because everything is included in one single download. There are no time limits or feature limitations whatsoever.

OpenOffice Includes Everything

OpenOffice includes all the essential components that most every computer user will need:

OpenOffice Writer: Word processor similar to Word
OpenOffice Calc: Spreadsheet similar to Excel
OpenOffice Impress: Presentation creator similar to PowerPoint
OpenOffice Draw: Graphics editor
OpenOffice Base: Database software similar to Access
OpenOffice Math: Formula and equation editor

Reads and Writes Other Formats

OpenOffice documents can be saved in open source formats to make reading and writing files universal, rather than creating proprietary formats that can only be read by the same program (like commercial solutions do). OpenOffice transparently reads and writes the most common formats, such as various MS Word (.DOC) files, Excel (.XLS) spreadsheets, and PowerPoint (.PPT) presentations.

If someone sends you a Word document, you can open, view, print and edit it just as if you were using MS Word. And if you save a document in MS Word format for someone else to open, they'll never know you created it with OpenOffice instead.

Also, after you create a document in OpenOffice, you can simply click the "Export to PDF" button, and your document can be exported into a PDF file that can be read by anyone with a PDF reader—even if they have not installed OpenOffice, Word or Excel.

Fast, Widely Used, and Well-Supported

OpenOffice was designed to run on various platforms, rather than just Windows. Emphasis has been placed on performance, so OpenOffice can run on slower PCs (including Windows 98 machines). After all, you shouldn't need the fastest, newest machine and the latest operating system just to write a letter with a word processor.

OpenOffice is included in most standard Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and others. Because OpenOffice has been downloaded over 50 million times, it is being widely used by businesses and individuals across the globe. This ensures that features, bug fixes, or other improvements that are in high-demand will be merged into the software faster. With so many users, there is a wealth of information, documentation and tutorials available on the Internet.

What We'd Change

First, we have trouble confusing the names "Calc" and "Math." Maybe we're just not that sharp, but it seems that another name (say, "Sheet") could have clearly conveyed that it does spreadsheets. Second, if the PDF output supported ligatures and a few other minor details, it would be competitive with LaTeX output. Third, Impress seriously needs a zoom-to-fit icon so your slides can fit on the screen.

We're big on attractive interface design, and OpenOffice has definitely done a great job in this area. The suite is very intuitive and familiar for users of Microsoft Office. Given its popularity, OpenOffice is very well-developed, so our wishes are minor. This project demonstrates well what the open source development model is capable of creating.