What is it?
OpenOffice.org is an open source office suite application available on major operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD.
Why is it great?
- Free of charge — no commercial licenses. You can use it for any purpose- private, commercial, educational, government, etc.
- Free to distribute — You can download it, burn it and pass it to family, friends, employees, students, etc.
- Multilingual — Support many different languages.
- Friendly — The software looked and feels like other office suite softwares.
- Compatiblity — Ability to read and write most of the file formats in other office software.
Who made it?
Sun Microsystems is the primary contributor to code to OpenOffice.org. Since OpenOffice.org is an open source project, anyone willing to contribute to the community is welcome to join.
Components
- Writer — Word Processor software for OpenOffice.org
- Calc — Spreadsheet software of OpenOffice.org.
- Impress — The presentation software similar to Microsoft PowerPoint.
- Base — Database software similar to Microsoft Access.
- Draw — a vector graphic editor.
- Math — MATH is OpenOffice.org’s component for mathematical equations.
Where to get it?
OpenOffice.org is available for download from OpenOffice.org.
Commentary
Because OpenOffice.org is available to anyone for free, it is a great alternative for business looking to cut costs.
OpenOffice.org can open documents written with Microsoft Office (Word and Excel) allowing you to open files written by anyone with Microsoft Office.
In addition to opening Microsoft Office file formats, OpenOffice.org also has the ability to write documents to Microsoft Office formats allowing people with Microst Office to open documents you prepared using OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org has the ability to export documents to Portable Document Format (PDF) without the need to purchase additional software.