Life with a Freebie Office Suite

Sun Apr 30, 2006 9:14PM EDT

See Comments (31)

I just zipped over to Amazon to price Microsoft Office: $407.99 for the full version that includes Access.

Wow. That's a lot of money. That's a painful amount of money, particularly for a set of programs that were released three years ago and requires wading through some nasty piracy-prevention systems just to install. That's a butt-bruising amount of money that could support my video game habit for a full year.

As I was knee-deep into reinstalling software on my new desktop, which is fresh back from warranty service and is a whole other nightmare of a blog post, I thought, what if I don't install Office on this machine for the fourth time? So I zipped over to OpenOffice.org and snagged the free competitor to the Microsoft suite.

I may never go back.

Like most people, I often pay lip service to "free software," but when push comes to shove, I scurry back to the pay-version standbies. But finally I'm caving, slowly but surely. 

So far, I'm awfully impressed with OOo, as it's sometimes abbreviated. A relatively small 100MB download gets you a full suite of apps: word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation software, and a couple of supporting applications. The only gap in the suite is an email client. Though freebies like Thunderbird are readily available, even if you want to stick with Outlook, that'll run you just $90 or so.

I still have Office on my laptop, and sharing files between the two systems has been pretty seamless so far. And using them hasn't presented any real headaches either. Most menus and commands are similar enough to be just as intuitive as the Microsoft version. I'm still working through the various parts of the suite (don't need to calculate cosines in Excel every day), so the jury's still deliberating, but so far you can color me impressed.

You've got nothing to lose by giving it a try: You don't even need to provide an email address to download the full version of the software. Meanwhile, I hope to read your comments about using OpenOffice on the boards!

Comments on Life with a Freebie Office Suite

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  • 26 Posted by jamesbond_usa on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:27PM EDT Report Abuse

    I use both MS Office (the full suite) and Open Office. On balance -- price apart -- I prefer the first because of its stability and wide availability. But having an alternative to Microsoft is always a nice thing to have. And OO is truly much cheaper.

  • 27 Posted by brucewildbush on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:14PM EDT Report Abuse

    I've not used OOo (but I'm kicking myself for paying hundreds for MSO on my laptop). My wife works in a library and they are going to make OOo Writer (only) available to patrons. I won't go into why that's a bad idea (except to say "You only have so many PCs for public use"), but it's a sign that any budget-strapped public or private company or agency is going to be using OOo before long.

  • 28 Posted by lou_dabbraccio on Thu Sep 3, 2009 6:57PM EDT Report Abuse

    Excel is a de facto standard in the business world. Serious data analysts rely on many of the advanced functions, which OO does not yet provide, as well as specialized plug-ins, like statistical and dashboard applications.

  • 29 Posted by martinebond on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:09PM EDT Report Abuse

    I don't use MS on principle but normally use Lotus. I needed a presentation program and downloaded OO. It's brilliant. It accepted everything I threw at - 123, Wordpro, and sundry pictures. I intend using it more widely. Martin Bond -

  • 30 Posted by brian1204 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:13PM EDT Report Abuse

    There is an old saying "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Someone had to pay for the development and for the continuous update for OpenOffice. Where are the costs? Advertizing? Anyone?

  • 31 Posted by civmanmi on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:25PM EDT Report Abuse

    I tried OpenOffice, but I prefer EasyOffice (www.e-press.com). It's not perfect, but it's free.

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