Software > Open Source, Office Applications

OpenOffice.org 1.01 office suite

By Lasa Information Systems Team

OpenOffice.org is the open source, free version of Sun Microsystems StarOffice suite. It was started as a community project to be worked upon by a team of volunteer developers back in 2000. With Microsoft Office Standard edition costing around £100 per licensed copy for charities, is OpenOffice.org the way to go for cash-strapped organisations? In January 2003, Lasa's Information Systems Team (IST) looked at the second release OpenOffice.org 1.01 and took the Writer application for a test drive...

Open Source?

Open source software is a method of software development and licensing and doesn't just mean you have access to the source code for development purposes or that it's free. Generally speaking, open source software requires the distribution of the code, in a readable form, with the application.

Access to the code allows people to make changes to the software, add features, or build other applications that will work with it. They can distribute these changes as long as the source code stays open.

Open source software is usually developed by a community of people who are associated by interest in the project. Changes, upgrades, and often the main application itself, are made by people who are volunteering their time. They are usually working for the end result - the ability to use a tool that does what they need it to do - rather than for financial gain.

For more information see the open source definition on the Open Source Initiative (OSI) website.

Getting OpenOffice.org

The suite is available as a 50Mb zip file download from OpenOffice.org and is also available on CDROM from various outlets. OpenOffice.org 1.01 (Ooo101 for short) will run on a PC with a Pentium or compatible processor with a minimum of 64 MB RAM running Windows 95 or higher with approximately 190 to 250 MB of free hard drive space. After unzipping the files, installation is simple and painless - clicking on setup.exe starts a familiar install wizard and you are soon ready to run the applications.

What do you get?

There are 5 component parts of Ooo101:

• Writer, the word processor
• Calc, spreadsheet
• Impress, presentations
• Draw, for graphics
• Math for creating equations

What's missing from a comprehensive suite is a database and an Outlook-style application.

The Adabas database can, however, be obtained if you purchase StarOffice instead (around £45 per single user license which includes support). But Adabas is not a simple database program to get your head around especially if you've been used to Access.

The lack of an email client could possibly be addressed by use of one of the other free clients such as the highly regarded Eudora or Pegasus Mail or maybe the open source option like Phoenix Mail.

In addition, the Mozilla open source Web browser  includes its own email client and of course Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which is free, includes Outlook Express. This won't, however, give you all the functionality of Outlook like the calendar, task lists etc.

In a networked environment you may need a mail server but there are low cost alternatives to the ubiquitous Exchange Server such as the shareware VPOP3, Ipswitch's Imail Server or Eudora's WorldMail Server. 

Writer

As word processing is the most commonly used application, we concentrated on looking at Writer and wrote this article using it. Users familiar with Word or any other word processing package shouldn't have too much trouble getting their head around Writer. Typing up a fairly standard document such as this article presented no real problems.

Most of the word processing features you are used to are there: fonts, formatting, columns, mail merge, headers, graphics, tables, spell check, etc. etc. Writer will save in various formats including Word 6 onwards, native Ooo101 text (.sxw - a zipped up XML) and template, text, rtf, web page etc.

Opening a Writer document saved in Word format in Word produced slight formatting differences with bulleted lists, for example, but no problem with a table with background colours, merged and split cells.

Opening a Word file in Writer is generally OK but Word doesn't like opening .sxw files though! This could lead to potential hazards when exchanging files with other organisations who are likely to be using Microsoft products.

Whilst there were a number of features that were liked in Writer they were outnumbered by annoyances such as inconsistencies with Word's shortcuts, formatting differences, lack of some familiar tool and mail merges being hard work.

Should you go open source?

So, is it a viable alternative to the all-powerful Microsoft suites for a small organisation?

The pros are that the price is right, it's fairly easy to use, and it does everything (and more) that you're likely to want to do. If you are uneasy about the stranglehold that Microsoft has over the software industry - or are an active supporter of the open source movement - then Ooo101 is going to appeal to you.

However, at the moment there are significant cons - for example, at the time of writing there is little formal training available for users. Whilst staff may be competent in Word, say, they may require some cross-training and that's just not around very much at the moment. Consequently there's likely to be more pressure on internal support staff (if you have them!) especially in the short term.

The good news is that at least one U.K. based IT training organisation, Happy Computers is planning to run courses on Star Office in the near future.

Community Technology also offer training in OpenOffice and other open source software. If you want to read about OpenOffice.org and train yourself, again there are few OpenOffice books listed by Amazon although there are a number planned for publication.

The My OpenOffice.org Resource Kit user's guide and CD by Solveig Haughland and Floyd Jones is now available from sources including amazon.co.uk. You can also get a fairly comprehensive 460 page manual if you buy StarOffice.

At present OpenOffice.org is more likely to find favour with large organisations who don't want to go up the Microsoft upgrade path anymore and can afford the luxury of having in-house trainers and support staff. But for a download which might cost you the price of a pint it could be just what you're looking for - why not check it out for yourself?

More information

The latest version of OpenOffice.org, is available from the OpenOffice.org website. Version 2.02 contains new features and bug fixes. Visit the website for a product description.

Idealware.org has a useful comparison of Microsoft Office vs OpenOffice.org.

For more on open source issues see the knowledgebase articles Going with open source software and Open source is on the map.

Non open source low priced alternatives

It might also be worth considering one of the other office suites around if you don't want to go open source but still want to save money.

Lotus Smartsuite (v 9.8 includes Word Pro, 1-2-3, Freelance, Approach, Smart Centre, Organiser and Fast Site) -  around £15 plus delivery at Amazon.co.uk (Apr 2006)