OpenOffice on the way 'defeated' Microsoft Office

The latest version of the open-source OpenOffice.org 3.1 office suite has just arrived. Some improvements of OpenOffice 3.1 can be easily recognized, but the most important changes of the office application on the way to replace MS Office are "hidden" in the design structure .

OpenOffice.org 3.1 is a suite of office application tools including a series of word processors like Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation) and Base (database management). Compared to Microsoft's rich app, OpenOffice lacks an email-handling application like Outlook, but it can be a perfect replacement for MS Office. In addition, the most important point is that OpenOffice is completely free, multi-platform support from Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows. OpenOffice also has a series of versions with localized display languages.

Impressive speed

The first impression of the new OpenOffice version is a more eye-catching interface. Using anti-aliasing techniques, application menus, text and images display much sharper and clearer. You can see an example of a comparison of the visibility of version 3.1 versus OpenOffice 3.0 here .

The OpenOffice test on Windows XP and MEPIS 8, a Linux distribution built on the Debian platform shows that the execution capability of 3.1 is much faster than its predecessor, especially on Windows. Previously, to start Writer, it took 12 seconds, at 3.1, to wait only 6 seconds. All applications in the new toolkit have improved processing capabilities. OpenOffice 3.1 is truly a leap forward in branding.

Another great feature of OpenOffice 3.1 is that it uses its own file locking system regardless of the operating system. This is an improvement that users expect when MS Office has integrated this feature for a long time.

Many exciting new features

Like the Firefox web browser, users can add accessories to OpenOffice to enhance new features. For example, Writer's spell checker can be integrated with language tools available on languagetool.org. Although there is not much improvement for the word processing tool set, thanks to the Language Tool, you will be able to avoid grammatical errors during use. In addition, the library of add-on tools for OpenOffice is regularly added and upgraded.

With Calc spreadsheet application, OpenOffice brings a real counterweight of Excel when improving the performance significantly in 3.1. If, in the past, a complicated spreadsheet could take up to 5 minutes to process, now Calc 3.1 will only take 5 seconds - a great change. Now, you will not need to 'pre-emulate' Excel to prevent complex spreadsheet processing tasks.

Still need to continue to improve

OpenOffice has a strong impression on speed, but in version 3.1 there are still a few shortcomings that need further improvement. Compared to PowerPoint, Impress is still not comparable. The presentation tool in version 3.1 has been refreshed with a sharper graphical interface, but this release has yet to bring the users' waiting features. If you regularly 'live' with PowerPoint, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Computerworld's editor, you might get a lot of trouble if you switch to open source.

With this improvement, OpenOffice continues to take a long step on its journey to conquer expensive MS Office users.