Don’t want to pay
for Microsoft office? Well Timmy, you don’t have to! You can use open source
programs called Open Office or Libre Office.
I personal used Open
Office many years ago on my school’s computer. I didn’t care for it to much
thou, at the time it was just a prettier word pad. Today they brought it up to
speed with the Microsoft Office XP look, which they both look like that. Anyway,
I installed Open Office on my Windows computer and my Ubuntu desktop had Libre
Office on it so bare-with me if you see a user interface difference.
The biggest thing
that I notice from using use Open Office from the past is this new side bar.
Now personally I’m use to the Microsoft Office ribbon, but this feature does
some-what of the same and if I do get tired of it I can tuck it away. The side
bar either displays the currently selected object's properties, or the styles
and formatting pane, or the clip art.
Now Libre Office, I
usually just use my Linux system for a game/media server but I attached a monitor
to it and decided, had to, to give it a try. First I found myself kind of stun
to see almost the same style, but I came to figure this is open source and
figured that they will share the same look in a way. I also found out that you
can access the side bar through an advance feature. So Open and Libre have the
same style and interface is a big thing to me.
So I did some
research and this is what made my mind up between each of the products. I found
out that Libre is updated a lot more than Open Office, which is a big deal to
me. This means bug fixes and new things are added faster, so of course I choose
cutting edge over polished any day.
Labels: IT, off-line, Office, Programs
