OpenOffice.org 2 Review

Originally Published: November 13, 2005

While the original OpenOffice.org was a fine product, the interface and the functionality left something to be desired. With OpenOffice.org 2.0 the open source community may have a winner on its hands. OpenOffice.org feels refined and it has many new features: A revamped interface, a database program, a new file format, better PDF capabilities, and it is more compatible with other formats, including those of the standard Microsoft Office.

About OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a joint project between the open source community and Sun Microsystems. It is available on several platforms and available free of charge. The original version was quite popular and became the standard for open source, free, office suites.

First Impressions

The new interface looks great under Windows XP’s silver theme. The menus make sense and the it feels very stable. The only complaint I can come up with so far is that it is a fair bit slower than Office. The word processor takes about 6 seconds to load on my computer. This is probably because OpenOffice.org runs as one program with several modules. Subsequent creation of new documents in any of the modules (Presentation, Spread Sheet) was immediate.

Word Processing

OpenOffice.org Writer is the word processing module of OpenOffice.org 2, and it performs its job rather well. In my tests, Writer was able to open my most complex Word documents though it does not support Word macros at all.

Spreadsheet

OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet module. It is with this version that it has become a real competitor to Excel because now Calc has the ability to work with around 65,000 rows, the number that Excel can use. Pivot tables support has also been vastly improved as has the support of a variety of file formats. Support for the file formats of Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel has shown the greatest improvement.

Presentations

OpenOffice.org Impress is the presentation module of OpenOffice.org 2. As with the rest of suite, the interface has been vastly improved and is very sleek. Importation of Power Point presentations works well and the wizards have become more useful.

Database

OpenOffice.org Base is a new addition to OpenOffice.org and provides a database program. It is simple enough to use but it really does not touch Access and it can not open Access files which greatly limits its usefulness. This program will get better over time and it is good to see that such a program will be included in the suite.

Conclusion

OpenOffice.org 2 may be the open source community’s answer for a free office suite. Easy to use, compatible with Office 2003 and very functional, it can accomplish most of what any user could want to do. And the best part is that it’s free, so you can test it out and see if it is right for your needs. I advise everyone to test it out and if it works for you, you just saved hundred of dollars.