Tuesday's Tech Tip: Open-source office tools

Everyone needs office software. The basics are a spreadsheet, a word processor and a personal information manager (PIM) like Outlook. Some people also need presentation software, basic drawing software and database tools.

What to do? Most people have two choices: Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works (Works is like a stripped-down, icky version of Office). MS Works can be had for about $40 and while MS Office varies in price, expect an entry-level version to cost about $100 if you get a deal.

A lot of people use whatever their system came with. What about people who want something better than Works, but don't want to shell out for Office? Open-source software to the rescue (again).

OpenOffice 2.0 is a free and open-source productivity suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software (like PowerPoint), drawing software and a database program. Here's the cool part: It's compatible with MS Office.

I use it on one of my work PC's and I don't have any problems with interoperability between OpenOffice and MS Office. If I'm making a file explicitly for use on an MS Office machine, I go to "Save as..." and choose the MS Office program format.

One caveat: You won't have trouble opening documents saved in previous MS Office formats. You'll have to wait a couple weeks for OpenOffice 3.0 to open documents specifically saved in MS Office's latest file formats. It's scheduled for release on September 16th.

Now, how about a PIM? Our friends from Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) to the rescue with Thunderbird 2.0. That handles your email and contacts. You still need calendaring, which you'll get with the Lightning calendar extension for Thunderbird. If you want to wait until the end of this year, Thunderbird will have calendaring fully integrated as opposed to the extension.

Why doesn't OpenOffice have a PIM as part of the suite like the Microsoft products? It's a design philosphy thing. MS Outlook is closely integrated with the rest of the MS Office suite and the OpenOffice people believe that that approach invites nasty exploits from the bad guys.

Second caveat: Although I use OpenOffice, I don't use Thunderbird/Lightning yet. I plan to switch soon on some of my PC's.

Link to OpenOffice 2.0

Link to Thunderbird