Open Office...alternative to none

I use to be the biggest fanboy of Microsoft Office for some time...that is until I realized that there was a truly viable alternative out there in the form of Open Office and did I mention it was open source and FREEEE! For me, at the time I started using Open Office, I was in college and didn't have the kind of money that one needs to throw at a Office Suite of applications the likes of Microsoft Office. This was about the point that I was enlightened...WAAAHHHHH...the heavens parted...err...ok...maybe not that enlightened...but I found Open Office and haven't looked back. Open Office has everything M$ Office has and in my opinion a little more.

The Open Office Suite has the following applications:

	Writer – a word processor
	Calc – a powerful spreadsheet
	Impress – create multimedia presentations
	Draw – produce anything from diagrams to 3D objects
	Base – database application
	Math – create equations with a GUI interface or by just typing in an equation

As you can see this suite of tools is no slacker when it comes to useful applications. Open Office also has the ability to open MS documents and to save to MS formats...a plus in the formats is that you can also export to a PDF document as well...without having an Adobe plug-in. I dove into the OOS headlong and the transition was flawless...I was doing all my work for all my classes with this bad boy and haven't looked back since. Some say that OOS is an alternative to MS Office, but I say OOS is an alternative to nothing...if anything is an alternative it should be the overpriced M$ Office.

Another benefit to OOS is the fact that it has been embraced totally by the 'nix community and on most distros you will find OOS pre-installed. So, as all the technorati folks can attest to...OOS is flexible in the OS's it supports and in the end is a far better suite than anything else out there. I do hope that this persuaded some of you to at least check it out...and share what you think of your experience with it...whether you are new or old to it.

- Open Office 2.1 Download