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Last month I started using Open Office. To prevent myself from backsliding, Microsoft Office was not installed.

The Open Office suite consists of one to one replacement for each of MS Office applications.

• Word - Writer
• Excel - Calc
• Powerpoint - Impress
• Access - Base

There is also Draw for drawing diagrams and Math for editing equation.

I had imagined the process of waning off MS Office to be a slow painful one. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise worthy of mention!

My memory of the old Star Office was that it opens really slowly. So the first surprise was quick load and start up.

Getting used to the program names, icons, file extensions, interface layout were among the first few obstacles. Usability wasn’t a big issue. The OpenOffice developers had done a great job in building the application as close to MS Office as (legally?) possible.

The first thing on the mind of people switching from MS Office would be file compatibility. So far from my usage, I can say that there is no major issue with word and excel documents. My complex documents opened with little or no problem at all. Just set Open Office to open MS Office by default and things work like normal.

With compatibility out of the way, we can explore some of the features offered by Open Office. My favorite had to be PDF printing. Now I don’t even have to install PDFCreator to produce PDF file from my document. It also partially solved the compatibility problem. If your clients or co-workers do not need to edit the document, just send it as PDF. This will ensure that they can definitely open it.

Another concept that I like is the ability to open and file type and the correct application loads. So I can open a spreadsheet with Writer or a document with Calc.

I will now take a closer look at Writer and Calc.

Word Processing

Word processing is the most common usage of office application. So Writer is probably the first application an user will encounter with Open Office. It has to impress and it does.

First impression lasts and my did. Using Writer, I opened a Word (.doc) document with style formatting, table layout and picture inserted. Not expecting too much, I was just hope the texts convert fine and I will just re-do the layout. Imagine my delight when the document opened with text, layout and graphic intact. How cool is that!

I consider myself an intermediate to advanced user of Word compared to my peers. At least I use functions the way they should be used - style formatting, generating TOC, footer/header, sections, merge.

Writer is still not polished in some of the more advanced functions but I’m sure it will get there.

For the routine task for creating letters, memos and simple business documents, Writer can indeed replace Word. Most importantly, it can open and save most Word formatted document without problem.

Spreadsheet

Like most people I use spreadsheet for calculation and also as a simple database/list.

Calc opens all my spreadsheets without problem. Those files with rather complex formulas opened fine as well. I have not tried files with VB functions though.

Heavy Excel users who remembered the Excel function keystrokes will need to re-adjust to Calc. I was especially handicapped by the lack of Excel quick keystrokes for selecting, adding and deleting rows/columns.

Overall Calc is very usable but still lack the polish of Excel. Things do get done a little slower.

Charting still need plenty more usability improvement but I am very impressed by its ability to convert many of my Excel charts.

Presentation and Database

I only did a quick survey of Impress and didn’t have to opportunity to try the database application Base yet. I write about it once I had a chance to use them extensively.

Overall, the experience with Open Office was very good. Do not wait till the 2.0 version matures and comes out of beta, try Open Office now and be pleasantly surprised.