The OpenOffice.org application suite performs almost identically to StarOffice 6, so it's a good match for Microsoft Word. With the OpenOffice.org suite, I was able to open and save to the Office 2000/XP file formats and even embed objects (OLE objects, plug-ins, videos, applets, formulas, and charts). OpenOffice.org is an outstanding application that would well serve any enterprise looking to cut costs. As an end-user application, OpenOffice.org is as simple to use as any other office suite and is as stable as any other -- if not more so. Based on my own experience, I've had far fewer crashes and data loss with the OpenOffice.org suite than I've had with Microsoft Office, StarOffice, or Applixware. The issues arise when you attempt to use some of the more advanced features of an office suite and then share the document with another suite. The first issue is that of fonts. Fonts have been the Achilles' heel of the Linux desktop for quite some time now. OpenOffice.org hasn't done too much to fix this problem. Even if you have the latest GNOME or KDE, by using antialiasing the fonts will remain fairly bitmapped. There are certain fonts (Alexandria, Arioso, Bookman L, Batang, Century Schoolbook L, and all of the *L fonts) that do a very good job of antialiasing, but many of these fonts do not have a Microsoft Word equivalent and will map to the closest equivalent. As the default font in Microsoft Word, Times New Roman is not horrible in OpenOffice.org. If you don't mind the bitmapped quality of this font, you will be fine (it migrates perfectly to Microsoft Word). Embedded objects were a bit of a trick with OpenOffice.org. Although they work perfectly within the application itself (adding an embedded spreadsheet worked just fine), I was unsuccessful at viewing the embedded object in Microsoft Word. Although OpenOffice.org could view a document created by Microsoft Word with an embedded object, if the document were saved in OpenOffice.org, the object was lost. It is possible to "pull" the embedded spreadsheet out of the document and save it on its own, but that defeats the purpose of embedding objects. One other glitch involved double quotes. It took me a while to figure out how to stop OpenOffice.org from replacing double quotes with a question mark. To fix this, navigate to the AutoFormat tool (through the Format drop-down menu), click on the Custom Quotes tab, and then uncheck Replace under the Double Quotes section. After doing this, all double quotes will remain intact. One enormous application
OpenOffice.org is the single largest open source application available, and it is huge. To go through all the available features would require a month's worth of articles. Suffice it to say that, if you can do it in Microsoft Office, you can do it in OpenOffice.org -- for free! From installation to use, OpenOffice.org is a valid stand-in for Microsoft Office for anyone looking to save a great deal of money. If you're confident that your users fall into the category of those who use only 5 percent of Microsoft Office's feature set (a majority of the computing world), making the switch to OpenOffice.org shouldn't be a problem. If, however, you know you have users who must exchange embedded objects with Microsoft Office users, your best bet is to stick with Microsoft Office until the gents at OpenOffice.org are able to get their suite to play well with Microsoft Object linking and embedding (OLE).
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