OpenOffice.org is a office-suit that is completely free, and yet still a worthy competitor to Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org is produced as a socalled open source project, controlled by Sun Microsystems, and contains the programs Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw and Math. Writer is a word processor, much like Microsoft Word, Calc is a spreadsheet much similar to Microsoft Excel, Impress a presentation program like PowerPoint, Base is a database much like Microsoft Access, Draw is as the name suggest a drawing program, and finally Math is a program for writing mathematical formulas that mey be used for instance in Writer.
OpenOffice can open many different file types, and is in itself the leading force in using and spreading the new ISO-standard for file formats. It uses itself the Open Document format (.odt), but can both read and write the most used file types like .doc, .exl, .rtf, .txt and many more. You also have the built in possibility to export your documents to PDF-files.
If you think that Microsoft's Office-suit is to expensive, then probably OpenOffice will be an excellent option. It has allmost all the same options and features, and most important, it is completely free. So when a new and improved edition is released, you won't have to dig deep into your wallet to be able to get the update. All you have to do is log on to the nome page of OpenOffice.org and download it. Here you also get access to the community, where you can get help from those with more experience if you have any problems
| Producer | Oracle | Alternatives | Microsoft Office |
| Size | |||
| Homepage | www.openoffice.org | ||
| Forum | |||
| Relevant sites | |||
| Open source | |||
| Specal requirements | None | ||
| Requirements | The software runs on all standard Windows PCs | ||