Technology OpenOffice 3 - Free Alternative to Microsoft Office

[southerndoc]

Nope, not spam folks... get it while you can (actually it'll be around for a long time hopefully).

OpenOffice.org just released version 3, which was released for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (Intel only), and some other platforms.

OO3 offers a word processor, spreadsheet, database, and presentation program. It has many features that Office has, but of course doesn't have them all. OpenOffice is an initiative started by Sun that is a community collaboration to bring about free software to offer alternatives to Office.

One of the features I like is that there is only one program/icon to open for anything. You don't have to open a separate program for word processor, spreadsheet, etc. It's all one program.

For Mac users, it definitely runs faster than Office '08.

Just passing along free software for all you broke students and residents... best of all, it's actually legal.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[HumidBeing]

Thanks! Have you tried this? Are there any difficulties sending files?

 

[southerndoc]

Yea, I've used it some. Haven't used it much because it was just released this week. I played around with the older version, but it required an interface for Mac OS X, so I gave it up.

The new version of OpenOffice is compatible with the newest Office. It supports .docx, .xmlx, etc.

 

[Mastashake]

Its open source so there's no way anyone can charge you for it. Well they can, but you'd be crazy to pay for it.

Another good program that's open source is Gimp, which is a great image editing/post processing program.

There's also some free PDF readers out there. Since Acrobat Reader is a memory HOG, its nice to click on a PDF and have it INSTANTLY open up.

I think people would be horribly surprised how little software you'd have to buy if you are willing to compromise and use open source stuff. You could even run Linux, and not have to pay for an OS!

 

[TRN1983]

Open Office is great. I've never had any problems with it on any platform (Linux/Windows/OS X).

Good post

 

[deleted87716]

For those of us with older (pre-Intel) Macs, NeoOffice is another option.

It's written in Java, so it's a little slow, but it gets the job done.

 

[bookgodess15]

Yes! Finally, .docx formatting!

 

[187502]

You guys and your silly open software movement

 

[bookgodess15]

You guys and your silly open software movement

We're modern-day hippies.

 

[DrJosephKim]

OpenOffice works quite well. I've been very happy using it on my laptop that is running Ubuntu

 

[Isoprop]

i love O too bad it's a MS word world out there. and a lot of times, transitions from OO to word goes not so smooth (and vice versa).

by the way, i hate the latest office.

edit: http://www.osalt.com/ lists some good opensource alternatives for popular commercial software.

 

[bookgodess15]

Here's the link for anyone on 64 bit computers:

ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/openoffice/stable/3.0.0/

 

[spinfast]

I've been using NeoOffice on a newish Mac and it's pretty good. If you're used to the basic features of Word and Excel, than NeoOffice will easily perform whatever you need. Once you start needing some more advanced features, it can get a little cumbersome. Also, documents saved in NeoOffice may not look exactly the same once opened in Word or Excel or vice-versa.

Overall though, and considering it's free, NeoOffice is pretty sweet.

 

[Chocolate Bear]

I've been using NeoOffice on a newish Mac and it's pretty good. If you're used to the basic features of Word and Excel, than NeoOffice will easily perform whatever you need. Once you start needing some more advanced features, it can get a little cumbersome. Also, documents saved in NeoOffice may not look exactly the same once opened in Word or Excel or vice-versa.

Overall though, and considering it's free, NeoOffice is pretty sweet.

I've been doing the same, but I think I'll give OO a try. Neo is not bad, but as stated previously, it's a little slow. Opening it can take a significant amount of time, which I'm not used to.