Apple produces its own Office productivity suite iWorks. Microsoft has Offce 2004. Both of these sotware packages have their limitations. Neither has a database management system. iWorks lacks an email client/task manager, though iCal, which is free on every Mac OSX operating system does an average job in both calendar and task management.
In the open source world sits OpenOffice.org, free office productivity software. is it worth the effort to download?
Now, before I go any further lets get one thing clear. I run a 7year old iMac DV with a G3 processor and 500meg of Ram. Yep... not the most up to date system on the planet. It's slow by today's standards, but it has not crashed under OSX and I have never had the hint of a virus.
I have MS Office 2004, and a few weeks ago downloaded OpenOffice.org to give it a test run before possibly downloading the PC version for m partners new laptop.
What a massive shock I was in store for. This program (or suite of programs) is very like MS Office, in looks and performance. It is a little slower grant you, (and needs X!! installed to run on a Mac) but not significantly on Write (the wordprocessor) or Impress(the presentation tool). Calc (the spreadsheet) is noticable slower than Excel on my system (coz it's old). So, that said lets take a look at whats on offer for free in the suite.
Write (the wordprocessor): For most this will be the main program used. It looks like MS Office, has all the basic and intermediate functionality of MS Office, saves to lots of common document formats, .doc, .rtf, .txt. and Open Document format. Add the ability to export/print directly to .pdf format and you have the beginninng of something good.
To go through the menu options would take pages of scribble, so I will cut out the waffle and get down to the results.
I have used OpenOffice.org to create reports and training documents with charts, diagrams and tables, Tables of contents (very easy to create), custom styles. Document creation was very easy and the results were as good as any wp software I have used bar none.
Mail merge and creating a biblography were a bit tricky, but I have to put my hands up to never being comfortable with these procedures with any wp software to date. OpenOffice,org seems a little easier than most with its on screen access to predefined data tables.
Overall I found OpenOffice.org very easy to use, stuffed full of features and capable of exceptional results. I do not classify myself as a MS Word power user (VBA nad obscure features) and for me OpenOffice wins by a whisker, but in six months time it may be by a mile!
Calc (the spreadsheet): Right a confession. I am a Mac user and love Excel. It is quite honestly, the best spreadsheet program by a mile.
Calc has a vast number of Excel features. It is the most Excel like clone I have seen, which is good (great). But it is slow compared to Excel. It struggles with large data files, complex calculations on my system. But it works very well in other respects.
There are all the most common functions, graphing & charting, pivot table (no pivot Charts) and a wealth saving and importing formats thatwork in a almost identical manner to the MS alternative.
One big minus for me is the VBA support is not there, thoughthere are other options for macro creation.
Excel wins this one because of its speed and macro language. but for everyday spreadsheets Calc is a very competent alternative.
Impress (the presentation software): MS Powerpoint is, without much doubt, the software that sets the standard for presentations in offices throughout the world. Its is straightforward to use, has more than enough features and very hard to match. So, I dare to say that Impress is better and for ease of use its better by a mile.
OK, there are not quite as many wizzy transitions, the onboard sounds in .wmf do not play on the Mac but these are minor defects.
Where Impree really lives up to its name is the dockable colour palette, drop-down gallery and an impressive set of slide styles that match and exceeed Powerpoint's abilities.Once I had played around with Impress, docking the gallery and colour, palette, imported a few templates and graphics I found Impress far superior for ease of use, with equally impressive results to Powerpoint.
Impress wins by a marathon.
Draw (the drawing program): there is no direct comparison in MS Office.Each Office program has access to a set of drawing tools. ooDraw is as near as makes little difference, a full blown graphics creation program with endless possibilities. I found creating diagrams and organisational charts very easy.
This program is a big bonus to presentaion an wp users and should not be dismissed as a freaky tool to have in an office suite.
ooBase (database software): I hate databases , Access in particular. ooBase is very Access like in looks and feel, but so far as I can tell not up to Access in preformence. It lacks some of Access' advance features but does a pretty good job as a basic relational database management tool.
If you are looking for more than a basic relational database tool, Access has to be the choice, but at a pretty heavy cost. Otherwise try ooBase there is a lot on offer much is outside my experience, but reporting does not match Access or Filemaker.
So the verdict, as I see it. OpenOffice as a general purpose office productivity suite is excellent.It performs all the functions well or very well for most users. Given that it is free, most small businesses and schools would find it more than adequate, as would many corporate businesses for general use.
For larger businesses, the additional power of Excel and Access may be the better option, at a cost.
Overall I found OpenOffice,org an exceptional example of Open Source software.
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