Take OpenOffice for a Spin
by Jeffrey Gerard, AmeriCorps OSM/VISTA
This month, Microsoft released Office 2007, the company’s newest office suite. The release flaunts a radically different layout than you might be used to from previous versions of Office, almost making it seem like you’re learning an entirely new piece of software. With that in mind, you might consider upgrading not to Microsoft Office 2007, but to a completely free alternative: OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is a powerful, open-source office suite very similar to Microsoft Office. In fact, OpenOffice has parallels to Microsoft Word (called Writer), Excel (Calc), PowerPoint (Impress), Access (Base), and Publisher (Draw). Actually, OpenOffice will probably look more familiar to the MS Office you’re used to than would Microsoft Office 2007. It is also compatible with any documents and files that may have been created with Microsoft Office.
In full disclosure, OpenOffice is still somewhat weak when it comes to making complex charts from spreadsheet data—if this applies to you, consider sticking with Microsoft for now. Furthermore, if you’re entirely happy with whichever office suite you use already, there’s not much point in upgrading to either OpenOffice or Microsoft Office 2007.
OpenOffice is free, whereas Microsoft Office 2007’s upgrade runs $279 per computer, or $20 for nonprofits eligible to get it from TechSoup. OpenOffice also comes with the ability to export files in PDF format, so you won’t have to buy Adobe Acrobat either ($299, or $30 from TechSoup). OpenOffice works on Windows, Macs, and Linux.