New Release of Open Office

October 15th, 2008 by Heidi

I love this program, well its actually a suite of programs.  Its a word processor, spreadsheet, database, drawing, presentation & math formula suite.  I use it mainly for the word processing and spreadsheet capabilities.

They have just released Open Office 3.0 to the general public on Monday.  It was so popular that Open Office’s website is having difficulty and they only display the download links.

I use this FREE software instead of Microsoft’s Office 2007, $400 suite of Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Outlook.  Or even the Home & Student version of $150.

• It is easy to use?  I think so. 
• Can I open Word docs sent to me?  yes.  And with Open Office 3.0, it also opens those new word docs from 2007 which have the ending .docx.
• Can I open Excel Spreadsheets?  yes
• Can I save my file as a Word doc or Excel Spreadsheet to share with others that don’t use OpenOffice?  yes
• When I create a document in OpenOffice that I want to share, I usually choose File | Export as pdf.   Almost everyone has the Adobe’s reader installed on their computer.  It’s also safer.  There have been a lot of virus attacks put into a .doc file and sharing that doc file.  Plus the person can’t edit it.  
• If you are collaborating on a project with someone, I would suggest both use OpenOffice and you share the openoffice file.

I have only used it for 2 days, so I haven’t even tried out the new features.  But if you are looking for a FREE word processor and spreadsheet, I suggest trying out Open Office. 

Its on my “Must be installed on computer list before I use that computer.”  Where the rest are:

• Firefox (for browsing)
• Thunderbird (for my email)
• Virus checker (currently Mcafee but only because our ISP provides it free)

I’ll try post back with a review of it or at least some great features that I like about it.