Open Office V3 Free version

[AlanHo]

I have been a satisfied user of MS Office through its many versions up to and including Office 2007.

I have just being doing some remedial work on a friends computer and installed for him the free version of Open Office Version 3. I must say I am rather impressed with this Office Suite - it seems to do all that I would require and is totally free.

Click here for download

[catgate]

Yes, it is a very satisfactory application.I have been using Open Office for about two years. The only two things I can fault are 1) .odt documents are something "foreign" to M$ Office and its users and 2) I miss the "Einstein" helper. Not that I used it, but I always had him active because he reminds me of an old Ukranian friend of mine.

[-pops-]

I, too, have used OO for a number of years in preference to Microsoft's overblown and grossly over-expensive office suite. I vowed when I installed Office XP that I wouldn't buy another copy of Office - and I haven't.

OO version 3 is an big improvement on previous versions being more user friendly (not that the old versions were difficult to use) and altogether "neater".

My son uses OO almost exclusively on his business computers and doesn't miss MS Office one little bit.

[Belatucadrus]

I updated to Star after Lotus had compatibility problems with newer Word docs, then shifted to OpenOffice when it got to be better than its progenitor. The only think I miss is the grammar check.

Interesting for those wanting a variation on a theme are the development projects.

Novell

Go OO

OxygenOffice

Do watch out however because while there are a few authorised developers, there are also ones like OpalOffice, that doesn't exist, all they do is flog you a link to OpenOffice.

[catgate]

I seem to remember something called Tiny Office or Small Office, or some such appelation, a few years ago. I think it was on a cover CD of a magazine. It had a audio documemt reader in it, which I thought was spoied only by its not having a Yorkshire voice option.

[Chris]

It's a looker...

[johnoo]

It's a looker...

I would also point out that "OO" has excellent User Guides, as yet for version 2.4, but no doubt soon to be updated for version 3.0 at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooauthors2/

[Seshomaru Samma]

Although I think MS Office is a much better product than Open Office , I think Open Office is a good alternative for most users (myself included) . I have often installed OO in offices and people complained that they can't use the new software, once I changed the icon to MS Word the complains ceased. With Open Office there is really no reason to use MS Word, unless you really need some of the more advanced functions that MS office offers.

And of course OO is cross-platform

[andsome]

Is Open office still without an equivalent to Publisher? I make my own greetings cards in Publisher, and when I checked over open office some time ago, this was not possible. :D

[Belatucadrus]

It has "Draw" for posters and cards, but to be honest I find it a bit of a bind to use when compared with Publisher or Serif PagePlus. I also suspect that Publisher produce files in a proprietary file format that nothing else can touch.