Monday, May 09, 2005

The latest version of the free OpenOffice suite promises to be a strong competitor to Microsoft Office. It's still in the "beta," or unfinished, stage, but it's already a good alternative for people who aren't heavy users. And you can't argue with the price.

It opens Word, WordPerfect and Excel files flawlessly. Saved files open fine on Microsoft programs. It also adds a database program that's similar to Access.

Another new and nifty feature, not found in Office, gives you the option of saving a file as a PDF, the ubiquitous document format. To do the same in Office, you need to install Adobe Acrobat or one of its knockoffs.

Just as in the previous version, most controls will be familiar to those who have used Office. An example: the menu headings in Write, OpenOffice's word processor, are identical to those in Word except that "Tools" and "Table," which are next to one another, have switched places. Open the programs side by side and you will be hard pressed to tell which is which.

OpenOffice also contains an analog to Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation application, a drawing program and an app for writing mathematical formulas.

The chief drawback of OpenOffice is that it still lacks an equivalent to Microsoft's excellent Outlook e-mail and calendar program. This need not be a fatal flaw.