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Feb28
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We have been writing about the Open Office suite (here, here, and here) and about Open Source software in general. I have covered the two main apps that I use, Writer and Calc, having switched to them several months ago. The other parts of the suite have received less use on my desktop, simply because I don’t need them every day, but by all accounts they are of similar quality as the Writer and Calc apps, where most users will spend most of their time. We’ll look at each briefly below.Open Office Draw – I have not yet transitioned to Draw, although I have used it several times. It seems to do a little of everything, and certainly seems to have everything that a user needs to create illustrations for documents and presentations. It is not Photoshop, although it will handle most image formats, including .psd files. Although it may not be Photoshop, or the combination of Fireworks and Freehand that I spend too much time in, but it appears to be a good journeyman application.
Open Office Impress – This Microsoft PowerPoint replacement is most capable. I had a consulting job as a Director once while a regular employee went on sabbatical for a year. Almost all management reporting was done via PowerPoint, so I got awfully good at it for a while. I instantly felt at home in Impress. It opened the most complex presentations that I have ever done, including my absolutely huge project management training master presentation. I can manipulate the pieces just like I can in PowerPoint. This one looks very solid.
Open Office Math – I am simply not qualified to judge this one. I have done a lot of statistics in my career, but straight math is not my thing. I’m going to have to leave this one up to you, if you need it.
Open Office Base – This looks like exactly what it is – a replacement for MS Access. I honestly have not used this much. Access began to annoy me years ago. It seems to get in the way of getting work done. Locally, I build databases in MSSQL Server. On Web servers I use mySQL. So I have not done any more with Base that build a simple database. It seems adequate for a personal database.
I have worked enough with Draw and Impress to know that the apps are solid for most users. They do as well as any Microsoft products that they would replace. I don’t know as much about Math and Base, because I don’t use the Microsoft counterparts. If those apps are important to you, I would urge you to download and install Open Office. It is a very well-behaved group of applications. Give it a try.
Tomorrow, the acid test: look and feel.
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Feb27
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Yesterday we looked at Open Office Writer, the Open Source word processing application. Today we’ll take a short look at Calc, the spreadsheet part of the free (as in beer) office suite. I spent much of my life as an...
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Feb26
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We have been looking at Open Source, both the theory and applications. Yesterday, we talked a little about Open Office, an Open Source replacement for Microsoft Office. We generally concluded that Open Office is an excellent replacement for the Microsoft...
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Feb25
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We have been writing a bit about Open Source lately (here, here, and here). We have talked about how unlikely it is that Microsoft will ever get it, and we have briefly mentioned an example or two. It is about...
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Feb23
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We have been discussing Open Source (Overview, How It Works (2)) lately. We would therefore be remiss if we did not report that there has been news, over the last week or so, mentioning Microsoft in the same breath as...
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Feb22
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The immediate assumption when you say something is free (or even very inexpensive) is that it is inferior. Open Source software is often “free” so almost as often the assumption of inferiority is applied to the concept of Open Source...
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Feb21
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This column has mentioned Open Source software a number of times in the last couple of weeks. Because I am an Open Source advocate, I somehow assume that everyone understands Open Source, like something magically gained with their morning coffee....
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Feb20
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In one of its occasional fits of pique, Microsoft saw fit not to provide updates for my perfectly legal copy of Project, which was my lifeblood for all the years I planned and managed software development projects. The reason was...
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Feb19
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On the subject of web applications, Google Apps is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the most popular Web applications is the Content Management System (CMS). Wikipedia defines the CMS as “a system used to manage the content...
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Feb18
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Staying with the theme of the WWW being a candidate for the business operating system of the future, let’s look at a quick overview of the major business-style applications that Google has available on the Web today: the Google Apps...
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Feb16
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If you think about it just so, there is an operating system more popular than any other, although you have to use one of the others to access it. Almost all computer users make use of it every day. It...
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Feb15
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The new player at the desktop table is Linux, one of many derivatives of the Unix operating system. I use the term “new” advisedly, since Unix itself has been around since 1969. Even Linux is getting fairly long in the...
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Feb14
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When Jobs and Wozniak brought their handiwork out of the garage in the late seventies, I’m sure that they did not envision the PC vs. Mac wars of today, or that they would make more money in music players and...
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Feb13
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Ah, the ubiquitous PC and its Windows desktop. There is still a lively controversy over which operating system is best, but there is no doubting who controls the most desktops. The IBM PC, with its Windows graphic user interface, took...
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Feb12
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Businesses today still run their major processes on the back room. Some of those processes run on mainframes, and still a few mini-computers. Many companies run the back room on PC-based servers. To the normal business user, which is to...
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Feb11
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When the idea of the personal computer finally hit it big, it seemed like there were a hundred companies, all with different ideas and systems, competing to be the winner of the race. I owned / built twenty or so...
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Feb10
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In the next phase of the computer revolution, companies like Digital Equipment Corporation and Hewlett-Packard began selling smaller and less expensive computers, called minis. They also sold software, but with computers more affordable, private programmers began to form companies to...
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Feb 9
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In the beginning, all software was either business or scientific software. The science side of things were concerned primarily with the computers themselves. The business side was, so early on, confined mainly to the business of government, simply because no...
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Feb 8
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Michael W. Jones takes over today as the author of the BestBizWare blog, part of the Know More Media network of business information blogs. Michael has spent over thirty years in the business of business software. He has been a...
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