Open Office - a hidden threat?

Continuing the topic of free software, I would like to talk about the products of Sun Microsystems - OpenOffice.org (the Russified version is available at ru.openoffice.org)

This is a package of office applications similar to those provided by MS Office, but the hallmark of OO (Open Office) is that this program is absolutely free.

So the package consists of the following programs:
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* Writer (Text Editor);
* Impress (Presentation Editor);
* Calc (Table Editor);
* Base (Database Editor);
* Math (Formula Editor);
* Draw

Writer, Impress, Calc and Base, as it is easy to see, have direct counterparts in MS Office, their interface largely coincides with the interface of the 2003 office, which cannot but please the end user who “grew up” on Microsoft products =).

Of course, with a strong external similarity, there are some differences, but they often concern details, it is possible to say for sure that if there is a desire and 20 minutes of free time, you can easily deal with most of the OO functions, and this is undoubted plus in the Open Source piggy bank, if intuitively it doesn't work out, then “F1 ″ =” is at your service. The help to the product is extensive and quite capacious, which allows you to find quite understandable information on the questions you are interested in, thank you very much to the developers.

At the same time, it doesn’t do without drawbacks, for example, the Impress editor didn’t impress me personally, it’s obviously still losing PowerPoint both in the set of built-in styles and in the convenience of text placement on slides.

So, is OpenOffice.org a worthy competitor to MS Office?

Sure!

Of course, in many positions it lags behind the “Leader”, but Sun is a company with great potential, and I’m sure that in a few years it will be able to make tangible competition to Microsoft, and we, the end users, are the only ones who need it. =)

Intense competition in the software market, which ultimately leads to revolutionary breakthroughs =)