The Net of Inter - Best Free Stuff The Internet Has to Offer

OpenOffice (AKA: OpenOffice.org, OO.o, or OOo) is yet another masterpiece from the world of free, open source programs. It is a complete alternative to Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, and all the other costly office suites. It was made for the people, by the people, and can open all your MS Office or Works documents plus many more, so anyone can switch without problems. I love it so much, I uninstalled MS Office on my new laptop and replaced it with OpenOffice even though it came with MS Office pre-installed. Most of these programs actually open, saves as, and even convert their commercial counterparts’ file types. OpenOffice works under the following operating systems: Windows (95, 98, ME, 2000, Vista), Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, BSD, OpenVMS, and IRIX.

OpenOffice Productivity Suite comes packaged with the following programs:

• Base: A database program to replace MS Access that can open database files from a number of other programs. This has probably the most user friendly options of any database program I’ve used without skimping on the features.
• Calc: An alternative spreadsheet program to replace Excel. It has all the features and can open up any spreadsheet file. A great one in the mix. A program I use all the time for when  I want to make tables and graphs and whatnot.
• Draw: From what I’ve seen, this is basically a low grade vector program for clipart. Tell me if you’ve found use of this one but it’s probably not the belle of the ball.
• Impress: A presentation and slide show alternative to MS PowerPoint. One great thing about OpenOffice Impress is that you can save any presentation as an Adobe Flash (.SWF) or Acrobat (.PDF) file making it easier to play on any computer even without a presentation program available.
• Math: Can be used as an alternative to Microsoft Equation Editor. Haven’t used it myself but it’s basically a tool that can be thrown into other OpenOffice programs to help create mathematical formulas. I’m assuming this wouldn’t be necessary for Calc or Base because they already have built in math features, but for Word Documents in Writer it would prove to be a simple solution especially for the calculation and science folks.
• Writer: An MS Word and Wordperfect replacement. It has all the features of the commercial Microsoft products plus some. It can even create PDFs out of any document right out of the box.

Official OpenOffice Website

Download OpenOffice (If you are an English Windows user just go to the official page and click download)

Let me know if you like it or if you think there are any better free office suites in the comments. Enjoy not giving Microsoft or anyone else your money.

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