OPENOFFICE.ORG 3.0

A Serious Rival to Microsoft Office

OpenOffice.org 3.0, is a free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Office. It is also the first and only
application suite that can be seriously considered a substitute for the massive power and flexibility of Microsoft's suite. OpenOffice.org used to look clunky and work slowly, but V3.0 is sleek and fast, retaining the essential look and feel of Office 2003 instead of imitating the new ribbon interface of Office 2007. That's a plus for many users who want as much continuity as possible when switching to a new application. OpenOffice.org doesn't include all of Office's features, but it does add some conveniences that Office can't provide, such as built-in PDF export and a single interface for opening and editing word-processing documents. HTML files, worksheets, presentations, and drawings. For government offices and corporations that don't want to depend on Microsoft (and don't want to continue paying Microsoft's prices ). OpenOffice.org 3.0 deserves an attentive look.


The suite has six basic components: Writer, a word processor and HTML editor; Cale, a spreadsheet; Draw, a graphics editor; Impress, a presentations program; Math, an equation editor; and Base, a database application. I was impressed with the way the interface hews closely to the familiar Microsoft Office 2003 standard and even improves on the placement of some menu items. However, I was less fond of the word processor's limited view options. In OpenOffice.org's spreadsheet, I missed the graphic flexibility of Excel's conditional formatting, but I managed well enough with the low-frills, 20th-century conditional formatting features.



Overall. I found performance impressively fast, on a par with that of Microsoft Office but with some limitations. File loading and saving, in all parts of the application, was almost instantaneous. OpenOfilce is also the only major application suite that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux with almost exactly the same feature set on all platforms. Furthermore, it works astonishingly well with your existing Office does. Although it stillhas rough edges, OpenOffice's impressive feature set. a generally lucid interface, and pure open-source credentials are reason enough to give it a try—especially considering that it's absolutely free.—Edward Mendelson

PC Magazine January 2009