Sun Microsystems OpenOffice Review

Overall Rating

Fully Open Source as many free copies as you want, home or business use.
Highly compatible with Microsoft Office.
Does everything you need.

Lack of grammar check.

OpenOffice 2.2 is the open source version of the StarOffice package sold by Sun Microsystems, it's a comprehensive office suite package consisting of:
Writer, Word processor.
Calc, Spreadsheet.
Base, Database.
Impress, Presentation program.
Math, Mathematical function creator.
Draw, Vector drawing tool.
It will open Microsoft Word and Excel documents very well and there is even the option to set the Save formats to the Microsoft equivalents instead of the OpenOffice defaults to enhance compatibility. Base is a very powerful database, if somewhat harder to use than Access, compatibility between these two is not so satisfactory.
Users of Microsoft Office will find that this takes a little getting used to, as while similar in many ways, the two packages don't always work in precisely the same manner to achieve the same objective. This may give people who are set in their ways some grief, but remember that the latest version of Office has a new interface and getting to grips with that if you upgrade will also involve a learning curve to climb. It will however leave you with a whacking great hole in the bank balance, something OpenOffice will leave untouched.
The only flaw I can find with OpenOffice is the lack of a grammar checker, the spellcheck is fine, but there are occasions where a bit more assistance would be nice. Other than this OpenOffice does everything a home user could require and will be equally suitable for most business users.
There are also a variety of older versions available for download if you have an older less powerful PC along with variants for a variety of alternative operating systems including Linux and Apple.
Try it, you may like it and when the time comes look at the price tag and decide is brand loyalty worth quite that much cash?

Members' Comments onBelatucadrus's Review

• danielm on 9th May 2007

  This is an excellent review. I've watched OO come a long way in recent times.