Because education should be free. Or at least accessible.
Microsoft* Office prices vary from $150 (home and student package-basic features) to $600 (the “ultimate” package) see a list of prices here.
The best/most complete freeware alternative for Microsoft* Office is Open Office.
Open Office is based on Star Office that was created by StarDivision in Germany in the mid-80’s. In ’99 it was acquired by Sun Microsystems who released the StarOffice suite.
Sun Microsystems is the main sponsor and contributor of OpenOffice.org.
As I am writing this article the latest Open Office version is 2.2.1.
Technical Support is available Online just like it is for any other freeware program.
Why install Open Office and forget about Microsoft* Office?
Open Office - gives you all the components Microsoft* Office has but for free.
- is freeware (you can buy a computer with the money you would have to pay for the Microsoft* Office 2007 Ultimate package)
- is available for the most popular platforms/Operating Systems out there (Mac, Linux, Windows* ).
- It does not use a proprietary format for saving documents like Microsoft* does in their desperate try of taking over the market.(uhm, sorry, that was a little bit of indignation right there)
- Has a portable version. You install it in a portable device such as your portable USB pen or a portable hard disk and take your work and your office suite wherever you go.
- Allows you to install it in your company for free. Forget about licensing.
- Allows you to open a document from any of its application, it will automatically launch the correct viewer/editor for your document.
Open Office components and their Microsoft* equivalents :
Writer | | Screenshot | Microsoft* Word |
Impress | | Screenshot | Microsoft* PowerPoint |
Math | | Screenshot | Microsoft* Equation Editor |
Calc | | Screenshot | Microsoft* Excel |
Base | | Screenshot | Microsoft* Access |
Draw | | Screenshot | No equivalent. Mistakenly people think it is like Microsoft* Paint. It is not. Draw* creates vector drawings. |
PROS:
1.Freeware
2. Open any document with any viewer, it will just launch the right application to view the document.
3.You can report a bug and involve yourself into testing and bug reporting and someone will actually do something about it.
4.You can view your documents in any computer, operating system, import from Miccrosoft* Office.
5.It has a portable version that is 100% legal. (Thanks to John T. Haller for the nice website- we will comment more about this in future posts)
6. It constantly improves according to the users needs.
7. Simple as one two three.
8.Has the same features regardless of the Operating system you are using.
9.You can open document formats that Microsoft Office does not support such as *wpd - word perfect files created on MacIntosh.
CONS:
1.It does not have equivalents for certain applications that come as part of Microsoft* Office such as Publisher, Frontpage, One Note, InfoPath although it has some of the features available in Writer and Impress.
2. It does not contain templates or clipart.(there are quite a few websites where you can get those).
And well, this is Open Office. If you have any ideas or any reasons why you like or not like Open office, leave me a comment.
You can also check Solveig's blog about Open Office (someone has a crush on this software :-)
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