What do you think about OpenOffice?

OpenOffice.org and MS Office can produce reasonably compatible files. Sometimes differences occur. Sometimes differences occur even between different versions of Microsoft Office.

OpenOffice.org I found reasonably easy to learn, but then I’d previously learned other word processors. It is not a clone of OpenOffice.org and is not supposed to be a clone. I think it handles some things better, notably styles. But when they have introduced a new feature, and there is not particular reason make it work differently from MS Office, they have often followed MS Office, sometimes exactly.

Basic manuals for OpenOffice.org are available at http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/oooaut... .

Lots of addtitional help is available at http://support.openoffice.org/ .

See especially two forums at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ and http://www.oooforum.org/ . You can also ask questions in a mail group. A wiki is available at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Main_Page . This is quite new.

Well OpenOffice does not yet have an outline mode, and does not have a built in grammar checker, though if you want one for English use their are some downloads available. On the other hand, it handles spreadsheet to DBF translation much better than MS Word. And most people think it handles styles better.

Both works are so complex that it is difficult to compare them, unless you are a power user of both.

*OpenOffice is compatible with MS Office files...

* You can spend a lot for Microsoft Office or nothing for this suite with full-function word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations, even an equations editor. 'OpenOffice' (OpenOffice.org)

* AbiWord (www.abisource.com) is a free word processing program similar to MS Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks.