This product is really great. It’s wonderful to have an Officesuite that isn’t tied into Windows! I could run this product on several platforms. Version 2.0 is due out soon, and it’s even better. Openoffice has a great feature for making PDF files which can be quite good for distributing documents across the Internet and across platforms, since Adobe Reader supports a wide number of platforms.
For teachers, this product is great for one reason and one reason alone, it’s easy for you to make sure that your students are all using the same platform, rather than importing/exporting Word files from Office XP or whatever. ( I must say, I do still use Office 97), but I won’t buy the XP version unless Microsoft start giving it away.
Of course if you want to, Openoffice can allow you to import/export Word files, too. You can simply go through the options and choose which formats you want. The only thing that is currently missing in Openoffice 1.0+ is a database porgram. 2.0 will rectify this nicely.
Other than that, when my wife got a new IBM Thinkpad, she needed an Office Suite. She had used Office 2000, so I surreptitiously installed OpenOffice and told her. Though the drawing tools are different, she hardly noticed and managed to use it for ages.
So, OpenOffice, is that the way of the future? We’ll see…
Kenneth