The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Open Office 3
 David Willing		  


Being an avid Open Office user, Melb PC's David Willing was waiting for the new version 3 to be released.

To my surprise I saw on Digg.com (Friday 10th October) that 003 was being uploaded to mirror sites ahead of its official launch on October 13th. It was on distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/#extmirrors and I used the openoffice.mirror.aussiehq.net.au/stable/3.0.0/ link. The 00o_3.0.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe was listed as a 128M file with the other Windows version at 142M which included Java Runtime.

I've enjoyed using products such as Open Office for years as their cost effectiveness and functionality provided all that I needed without excess. My family, friends and I are not "Power Users" but rather your typical group who want to write some simple formatted documents, use a spreadsheet to do a budget, make a flat database file for a club or make a brochure or other presentation type of page. Nothing complicated - we don't want 85% of MS Word or Excel's "Special Features", just something that works and works well.

First of all I had to uninstall Open Office 2.4 and then restarted the PC to make sure of a clean install. When you double-click the exe file it unpacks itself to the desktop as default. It then continues for about two minutes where you can specify who will use the program and exactly what or how much of it you want to install. (I just chose the default). Everything goes very smoothly and you then have a desktop icon which when clicked gives you the screen to enter other details and register if you want to do so. (No forced registering - great).

Open Office 3.0 has the following:

  • Base (Database) - Manage databases, create queries and reports to track and manage your information.
  • Calc (Spreadsheet) - Perform calculation, analyse information and manage lists in spreadsheets.
  • Draw - Create and edit drawings, flow charts, and logos.
  • Impress (Presentation) - Create and edit presentations for slideshows, meeting and Web pages. Math (Formula) - Create and edit scientific formulas and equations.
  • Writer (Text Document) - Create and edit text and graphics in letters, reports, documents and Web pages.
If you use the "open a document" from the OpenOffice.org button it will automatically open any MS Word or Excel or other file. After any modification, you can then save this as the same type or as a PDF directly. All of these programs have a very familiar feel to them to what you might use at work or other places.

One thing that has changed from the last versions is the ability to automatically specify that Open Office opens all M$ files itself. But no problems there as all you have to do is go to "My Computer", "Tools", "Folder Options", "File types" and then associate doc with swriter, xls with scalc, ppt and pps with simpress, and any other ones with their respective Open Office equivalents.

Rather than continue to bore readers with explanations of how all the features work, all I can say is that this complete package should suit the majority of people, and it is free. Give it a try. Don't waste money when you don't have to and don't use illegal versions which might play up because you can't or haven't got the latest critical updates.

If you aren't sure how to put this on your machine, either ask a friend or ask this Club for help because this is what we do best. Help our members make the most of their PC.
 


Reprinted from the December 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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