OOo is short for OpenOffice.org. Since Massachusetts decided to pressure the MicroSoft Office folks by insisting on an open standard for document format for the state business, things have gotten interesting — and political. The most talked about article currently over at C-Net is this article on that very subject. Has everyone tried the new Open Office 2.0? I have and it looks very nice. I am currently reading a book called Point and Click Open Office. I’ll review the book in a few days probably, but it looks very good so far.
What I really like about Open Office for starts is that it seamlessly creates pdf documents. WordPerfect (I highly prefer this program over Word) will also make pdf’s pretty well. Not so with Word. After using Open Office for that, however, I find I am using it for more and more things and using Word less and less.
A big part of the argument over at C-Net is that Open Office — and open source software — is not really free because it lacks support when used as a free program. Now lets think a minute …. if I can buy a product at say $100 a copy and I need thousands of them, or I can get the same product for free, won’t it make more sense for me to train my own support person anyway? I don’t need the companies support if I have my own as any organization of the size of Massachusetts for example. Even in a smaller business, buy the book above for $20 and you are off to the races. It is an easy to use program.
