Student Office Software

I'm a fan of open-source software. What really hooked me is the catchphrase "Free as in Freedom." Any college-age kid knows that software and music and video can be obtained for free - it is the decision of the individual whether they are willing to use it without paying for a product that has a price tag. Some call that stealing.

Sure, open-source software is free in the same sense that such "stolen" software is - it doesn't cost any money to install and run. For me that was an initial attraction. But Open Source programs do more than that. The DNA of the program is released in the public domain so that any person with the knowledge and skill can view, patch, correct, or use the DNA of a given program. The idea is that programs are information...and information, like speech, should contribute to the well-being of the world at large. I was so taken with this idea that I turned to open-source computing on a large scale - I no longer run Windows or the Mac OS, but instead run a GNU/Linux operating system called Ubuntu, and use open-source programs with it.

One such program is Openoffice.org, the drop-in replacement for the MS Office suites. Openoffice is built in standards that allow it to communicate in a much larger array of ways than Office can - it can open and save dozens of file formats, up to and including Microsoft's latest .docx format.

Some Openoffice (OO) users complain that some functions aren't as intuitive as Office's. I beg to differ in most cases of that point - it simply seems less intuitive because those users are used to Office's, but in fact with some thinking OO's treatment of certain functions makes even more sense.

And there's one thing that Office can't do out of the box, that OO can...save as a PDF. Have you ever had a paper due with REALLY specific formatting requirements, e-mailed your document to yourself to open it on a school or a friend's computer, and suddenly...your formatting has changed somehow? Nothing about the document has changed - usually situations like this are due to differences in the programs reading them, as Microsoft keeps changing the way their programs render the documents saved as .doc. Using a PDF, however...eliminates such problems, because PDFs are more like pictures...so they can't be messed up on a different computer. PDF's are also a much more professional way to submit things like resumes, CVs, letters of recommendation, and other official correspondence. Openoffice.org's free, free-as-in-freedom office suite allows you to do just that...painlessly. As in, click File>Save as PDF. It's that simple.

But the PDF functionality is available in Office for a fee or with an add-on. Sure, that's true - but my problem with Office goes well beyond it's unprofessional finish. Office's most recent iteration - 2007 - with the new .docx formats - is very poorly compatible with the older versions. Additional packs have to be installed just to render/view .docx documents, and the formatting is frequently lost on such documents. With Openoffice there's never been a massive shift in formatting. Openoffice sticks with the Open Document Format as it's default saving schematic, which allows consistency across versions of OO.

I really strongly encourage anybody reading this to take a look at Openoffice.org. It's an amazing resource and it's all I use to do personal, scholastic, and work editing.