Microsoft Office Versus OpenOffice.org
I have been using Microsoft Office for at least six years and use it on an everyday basis now that I’m a college student. A few weeks ago though, I stumbled upon OpenOffice.org. I needed a program that would allow me to export documents into PDF format and read that OpenOffice.org had a feature that would allow you to do that. I was thrilled, but I have to say I’m still using Microsoft Office, though I’m not sure why.
Microsoft Word, which is the word processing program in Microsoft Office, first made its debut in 1983. It would later be packaged into Microsoft Office, which hit the market in the early 1990s. Microsoft Word comes bundled with several other software applications in the Microsoft Office package, but just how many other software applications depends on the edition that you buy. For this article, I’ll stick with the standard edition, which comes with Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Word. Excel, which is a spreadsheet program, is useful when making grocery lists, lists of DVDs, etc. PowerPoint is used to make presentations and comes in handy when you want to impress a college professor or your boss. I absolutely hate Outlook, which is an email program that is supposed to make your life easier, but it doesn’t. Then of course there is Word, which is a word processing program. I use Word everyday and don’t know what I’d do without it. All in all, the programs in Microsoft Office are good quality, but the standard edition cost $399 from Microsoft, of course you can find it cheaper, but you can’t find it for free.
Now OpenOffice.orgâÂ?¦..what can I say? For one it’s free and best of all it’s not a Microsoft product. The creators of OpenOffice.org were tired of people being charged an arm and a leg for programs they could offer for free. The people at Sun Microsystems acquired the program from a company in in 1999. StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000, but beginning with version 6.0 the software became OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org offers programs similar to Microsoft Office programs; they just have different names and few different features. The OpenOffice.org version of Excel is called Calc and it works basically the same way as Excel, except that it allows you to export the document as a PDF file. Impress is the OpenOffice.org version of PowerPoint. Then there’s Writer which is the OpenOffice.org word processing program. Writer is the reason I downloaded OpenOffice.org. I needed a program that would export documents as PDF files and didn’t cost anything and I was thrilled when I found out OpenOffice.org could do just that. As far as I know, OpenOffice.org does not offer an email program.
OpenOffice.org is a great set of programs for several reasons, the best reason being the fact that it’s free. I honestly don’t know why I don’t use OpenOffice.org more often, I guess it’s because I’m so use to Microsoft Office. While doing research for this article I found out that there is a plug-in for Microsoft Office that allows you to edit PDF documents, but I’m not sure if it will allow you to export files as PDF documents, if so I guess I’ll be using Microsoft Office all the time. I hate saying this because I strongly believe that OpenOffice.org is wonderful software and that more people should try it. The download is free, so why not give it a shot? If you’re a college student you’ll need a word processing program for college and if you can’t afford to buy Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org will be perfect for you.
