Friday, March 11, 2005

The two best things abut Openoffice are:

1. It's free.
2. It's Cross-Platform.

Both these advantages mean that you can download OpenOffice and install it in Windows. Once you have done this, you can start using it and getting accustomed to it. At the same time, if you have problems, you can always fire up Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice is about to release its version 2.0. This is a great improvement over the previous version, and really makes it easy to shift from Microsoft Office. Version 2.0 is still in Beta, as of this piece, but a final version is due to be released by the end of this month. We suggest that you try out the Beta, or, if Beta versions aren't your thing, wait a few days for the Final version and use that.

The previous versions of OpenOffice were not very attractive. The new version changes all that with complete integration into the underlying operating system. On Windows XP, it will look like your XP applications, while on Linux it will use the UI (user interface) widgets that you have defined.

Previous versions of OpenOffice were criticized for not including a proper word count feature. It was not possible to do word counts of a selected block of text. This has been fixed in version 2.0, with standard word count features being added, and the word count feature being moved to the Tools menu.