I highly recommend anyone here who hasn't tried OpenOffice.org 2.0, to download it and give it a try. I wasn't that impressed with OO 1.x, but 2.0 is looking very good.
Pros:
* People using MS Office can feel at home about certian things (toolbars are more MS Office 2k3-ish than the OO.Org 1.x ones).
* Macro support looks good. Objects can be assigned names, and easily converted to other types of objects.
* You can insert JAVA APPLETS in your document, as well as OLE junk.
* The new "Base" program is great. I was able to hook it up to a MySQL database quite easily, and it also supports it's own local DB format. Very impressive to me.
* The thing's help system is coming along very nicely.
* It can export to PDF (which I'm pretty sure 1.x could do too).
* It's not a blantant rip-off of MS Office. It's dialogs are not the same as those in Office, although they're still easy to use. You can figure out how to change line spacing using the Paragraph Styles dialog quite easily, by going to the Idents and Spacing tab. If you still disagree, go to View and Toolbars.
* If you've ever used the Format Painter in MS Office, it works the exact same way for OO.Org, no suprises
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* Writer has a FORMULA BAR!
* Find/Replace supports Regular Expressions.
* Almost every program allows you to turn on a Grid (useful in Impress and Draw, in particular).
* Every "custom animation" and "slide transation" you might expect from Office 2k3 seems to be supported in Impress.
* Table creation drop-down button is more useful in OO.org than in MS Office (it grows to support more than just 4 x 5 tables).
* It's FREE
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* Mail Merge in Writer IS supported via the Tools menu.
* It appears to be licensed under the LGPL, not the GPL (I prefer the LGPL since it's less strict).
* I actually recognize the font names in 2.0.
* Export support provided by the Applications is good.
* I prefer Save/Discard over Yes/No/Cancel (MS Office), when closing the program with work I haven't saved.
* The color bar in Impress/Draw makes re-coloring shape elements a snap.
* I can insert animated images, and edit the animations.
Cons:
* Can't figure out a way to view the motion paths assigned in Impress (the PowerPoint equivalent).
* Heard complaints regarding Access support in "Base".
* Where is the clipart? I am aware certian people HATE clipart, but there is a segment of people out there who really like it. Sure, someone could buy one of those CDs packed with WMF/EMF/JPEG/GIF (if you really hate GIF, just convert it to PNG)/BMP files. I don't think the average user likes that though. They want things to just work
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* Seems to be missing the pen you can draw tables with that exists in MS Office (maybe a patent issue there?).
I wonder if the fact that the OO.org team "caught up" with MS is why they decided to change the interface Office uses...
EDIT: I see other people share a similar opinion that I do.
When 1.1.3 came out, I gave it a try and almost immediately went back to using Office XP. Since using 2.0, I have no plans of going back to MS Office again. If you're looking a free alternative to MS Office, OO.org 2.0 is definetly the way to go.
its only 90mg and its worth it.
I just updated to 2.0, and let me say:
It's freaking awesome.
