Apache OpenOffice

Apache OpenOffice is ideally suited for you if you are a student and don’t have any money to spend on a productivity suite, if you’re a regular user and for some reason you don’t want to part with your hard earned money, or if you’re running a company and you need to stay on a tight budget. OpenOffice delivers all the functionality you would expect from Microsoft Office, without the price tag. It is a free and open productivity suite that you can use to edit and create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Apache OpenOffice is available for multiple platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, Java. The system requirements for running the application on Windows (anything from XP to 8) are as follows: 512MB of RAM memory recommended, at least 650MB of free disk space, 1024 x 768 or higher resolution with at least 256 colours.

The setup wizard that helps you install Apache OpenOffice on your Windows PC will ask you to pick between a Typical and a Custom Installation. Go with the Custom Installation option and you’ll get to pick what elements you want to install: Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress, Base, Math, and so on. Before the installation process completes, you will be asked to set Apache OpenOffice as the default application to open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

Launch Apache OpenOffice and you will be presented with a prompt that allows you to get started with a text document, spreadsheet, presentation, formula, and more. Choose to get started with a text document for example and you will be presented with an interface that’s reminiscent of Microsoft Word. The same goes for getting started with a spreadsheet or a presentation. If you’ve used Microsoft Office in the past, the interface should feel very familiar; you’ll immediately feel at home using Apache OpenOffice.

Speaking about using Apache OpenOffice, you can expect it to deliver all the functionality you would get from the proprietary MS Office suite. The OpenOffice suite is made up of a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a presentation application, a drawing application, a formula editor, and a database management solution.

Why would you go with Apache OpenOffice instead of a similar application? I can think of several reasons: it’s free, it’s incredibly easy to use, it’s available for multiple platforms, it has lots of useful functionality to offer.