A Software Review:

By Philip A. Foster, MA

As a business consultant I am always looking for ways for my clients to be more wise with their money and more efficient in their work.  Recently I was surfing through www.download.com, which is a great resource for anyone, and discovered the world of "OpenOffice."  Open Office is a FREE - yes you read that right FREE - Office Suite comparable to Microsoft Office.

Per their website at http://www.openoffice.org " OpenOffice.org is both a fully-featured office suite compatible with leading office products, and a virtual community working through OpenOffice.org's numerous projects. The community comes together at www.openoffice.org to develop, support, and promote the use of OpenOffice.org.

Basically it is a bunch of software developers around the world that have created this product.  You can donate to the cause but there is never an obligation to buy the software.

I've personally downloaded the product and used it.  It opens MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint Files without problem and even saves them as such.  The screens look similar to the MS products so there is not a steep learning curve - however with anything new you still need to learn some of their semantics. 

The product gets a 5 star rating by CNET and 4.5 stars by nearly 200 private individuals.  Download.com has seen nearly 400,000 downloads of this product since March 8, 2006.

The download process was easy - nothing to really set up.  The software came through extremely stable and was easy to use.  I would recommend any business whether or a tight budget or not to check out this up and coming software package.

The suite comes with a word processor, powerpointesq program, a math program, drawing program, database, and spreadsheet product.  I am sure more is sure to come.

The great thing about these open source products is that there is never a fee for future updates or additions to the product.

Another product in the similar vein in FireFox web browser http://www.mozilla.com/firefox

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Philip Foster holds a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership with an emphasis on Coaching and Mentoring. He works with individuals to help them find and reach their full potential in life.

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