Free OpenOffice giving Microsoft a fight

Microsoft Corp. is fighting for its life on the desktop, and it is not where you think.

Windows remains important and the release, maybe even this fall, of Windows 7 is critically important. But what is more important is the continuation of Office, the hugely popular collection of office tools like word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software.

Microsoft makes a ton of money on Office because it has become the de facto standard for the corporate desktop. Every large company has Office loaded and its employees have all learned how to use it. However, in recent years and with the decline of the world economy, more companies have been looking for ways to cut their IT costs. And consumers have been, too.

And so more are turning to free IT solutions, one of which is OpenOffice, the hugely successful suite of productivity tools that is offered for free in direct competition to Microsoft Office. As the name would imply, OpenOffice is "open source" software, meaning it is developed by developers that have donated their collective skills to the public good.

Already the software has been downloaded more than 50 million times and installed many times more than that all over the world on all kinds of computers. Part of that is the price — free — that makes it compelling for consumers, universities and businesses looking to cut costs. But part of the appeal of OpenOffice is the overall quality. After using the applications for a few weeks on my home computer, I don't think most consumers will ever miss the brand-name Office product.

I think the sole exception to that is if you are a hard-core spreadsheet addict. For that, I think you will miss Excel. True, you can download all manner of add-ins for OpenOffice's version (called "Calc") and generally find enough ways to overcome any shortcomings of OpenOffice's spreadsheet. It is kind of a pain.

The presentation application, which is a competitor to PowerPoint, is called Impress. If you have not used PowerPoint a lot, you won't notice the difference. If you are a PowerPoint Jedi, you will be driven insane, albeit slowly, by the differences. But for typical users, there is plenty here and the price cannot be beat.

The database application, called Base, is aimed at Microsoft Access, the scourge of IT departments everywhere. It is interesting and clearly not going to replace Access any time soon, but for home database projects it's plenty. The basic drawing program also included is plenty good for what consumers need.

The real reason Microsoft is facing this challenge is pricing. Many of us expected Microsoft Works, the more basic version of Office, to be given away free by now, but that hasn't happened. Instead, Microsoft has more aggressively released a Home and Student version of Office for consumers that allows you to use Office at home for less than $100, without Access.

You can download OpenOffice for free at www.openoffice.org and give it a try and see if it meets your needs.

James Derk is owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm and a tech columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com.