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OpenOffice is one of the most well known UNIX office packages,
with arrays of functionality, it's the top of the line when it comes to Office
editing, it even gives Appleworks a run for its money. OpenOffice uses the
power of X11 (www.xdarwin.org),
with the ability to be able to run in many windowing systems like KDE, Gnome
and XDarwin of course. One of the major pluses of this product is that its
totally free, and incredibly versatile.
Features
OpenOffice has all the functions you need for a business or family, with Word
Processing, Speedsheets, Presentations, and Drawing for the kids! One of
the great aspects is as I mentioned earlier, its versatility. You can save
the documents in many formats including Microsoft Office, RTF (Rich Text
Format) and many more, making it incredibly easy to transfer between computers.
You are easily able to create tables, graphs by the click of a button. OpenOffice
has all the features of any other Office suite plus more, because of its
wide network of developers working to make it better than the rest.
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Open Office - Looks and functions, like...ummm...Office.
But it's free! |
The Interface
One of the most important things a program needs is an interface in which both
new users through to experienced users get the work they need done quickly
and without much fuss. Some would most likely argue that OpenOffice's interface
is ugly or not appealing. But if you look closer you'll find that it looks
a lot like Microsoft Office. Because of this any computer user, Windows or
Mac, can come along and get going with their work. One of the major mistakes
in MS Office is the interface always changes, this can be confusing for some.
With OpenOffice this hasn't happened between versions and the future is getting
brighter!
The Install
The install is not for the faint hearted, taking about 30 minutes all up to
configure, and figuring out how to start the program itself was something
I found difficult. But I have to say its well worth it. If you have a keen
mind for exploring the boundaries of your mac, this is a great way to start.
by installing it you may learn things about operating systems you never knew;
highly recommended to have a go.
AppleWorks or OpenOffice?
Will you be switching? Although OpenOffice is a very versatile program
it has a way to go. There are many little bugs and performance issues are still
there. It has the potential to be a very powerful Office suite on OS X but
it still needs a lot more work. Personally I'm sticking with AppleWorks, mainly
because of its stability and its integration with OS X. OpenOffice also includes
many little extras like built in HTML support so you can make simple web pages;
Macros scripting so you can program certain key combinations to perform tasks.
What's the bad stuff?
There are some downsides to OpenOffice like only supporting TrueType fonts,
which are most commonly found on Windows machines, but this will be fixed
very soon; A very limited Clipart database, if any; Too much of a Windows
feel sometimes. It's just not wanted. The extensive grey colouring is overboard.
Requirements: OpenOffice requires OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) with
256 MB of RAM and 250 MB of free disk space, although I run it fine on 192
MB of RAM. It also requires some kind of X11 windowing system, Apple have
just released there own X11 which is available from Apple's web site (42
MB).
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