![]() Apache OpenOffice is an open-source office productivity software suite containing word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula editor, and database management applications. was a fast Internet connection - and we liked it! He can be reached at. Vaughan-Nichols has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was cutting edge and 300bit/sec. ![]() Except for advanced presentations, there's nothing you can't do in the free that you can in the ever-more-pricey Microsoft Office. But if you're getting tired of paying for a new version of Microsoft Office every few years, you should try this latest edition of. You'll be impressed.Ĭalc aside, 3.1 isn't a major step forward. In particular, I think anyone who does spreadsheets every day owes it to themselves to compare Calc and Excel. ![]() With these performance and appearance improvements, I can see more users moving to this free office suite. If you make your living with PowerPoint, you won't be impressed with Impress.įinal verdict: I've been using for years now. If you just do presentations once in a blue moon, Impress is fine. There are some improvements, thanks in large part to anti-aliasing making the graphics sharper, but it simply doesn't offer as many features. Impress, 's presentation manager, is good, but it's not PowerPoint good. Much as I dislike sitting through PowerPoint presentations, I know that many people rely on PowerPoint every day to get their points across. What needs to be fixed? It's not all good news. In the past, I kept a copy of Excel around for taking care of heavy-duty spreadsheet jobs. Complicated spreadsheets that in the past allowed me to take a 5-minute coffee break while they finished their calculations now run in five seconds. In Calc, 's answer to Excel, performance has been given an incredible boost. (Although I did encounter some Java run-time errors when I tried to run it.) I've been waiting for this feature since first showed up. It won't significantly improve your writing, but it will save you from some of the more idiotic grammar errors. For example, Writer's existing grammar checker framework can now be augmented with extensions like LanguageTool. What's cool about it?, like the Firefox Web browser, can use extensions to increase its functionality. The file-locking mechanism preserved the document from my best attempts to make a complete mess of it. I tried to mangle a shared document (that existed on a Windows Server 2008 file server) by editing it from my Linux desktop and also from my XP desktop. Now Jack in marketing, who uses a Mac, can't overwrite a change that was just made by Jill in the (Windows-based) comptroller's office. It's almost like running on a brand new machine.Īnother good feature, if you're considering for office use, is that it now has its own OS-independent file-locking system. I saw similar performance boosts when running the various other applications. It used to take about 12 seconds to launch Writer now it takes just over 6 seconds. This was especially clear on when I ran it on a Windows XP system. What really caught my attention after a few minutes of using the various apps was how much faster this version is than version 3.0. I tested the suite on a Windows XP system and one running MEPIS 8, a Debian-based Linux distribution.
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