Calm Seas Software Consultancy

With the growing sales of smaller, portable netbook PCs, a growing range of PC users are being introduced to products based on Open Source for the first time. This has widened the audience for OpenOffice.org.

Although both OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office each have their own strengths and supporters for most general purposes either will meet the average user's requirement for word processing and spreadsheet needs. Unlike Microsoft Office however OpenOffice.org is available as a free download from the internet.

There are differences between Open Source and commercially licensed products, the most widely documented being the support structures. With a commercially licensed product there is a well defined support structure to resolve problems with the product and develop it further, whereas Open Source code is generally supported by a wider community of technical specialists to fix and improve.

While not suggesting every organization throws away its current Microsoft Office installations and converts to OpenOffice.org, in these difficult financial times there are many advantages in extending the range of products used to include OpenOffice.org. These include :

• OpenOffice.org works well with other office productivity tools. (It is excellent at opening/saving documents in Microsoft Office product formats and also allows documents to be converted to PDFs.)
• Providing staff with the opportunity to use same Office products at home and work, without incurring extra licensing costs.
• Extending the range of word processing products used, avoiding reliance on one product or supplier. This can add flexibility to future IT architecture and sourcing strategies.
• Immediate cost savings.

Find out more about OpenOffice.org at the following link OpenOffice.org