Yes, Microsoft Office has usurped the market when it comes to professional tools for businesses. However, a resistance is growing against Microsoft products and other paid software because there are so many open source alternatives out there that are equally good.
One such alternative is the OpenOffice.org products. Their OpenOffice Writer is considered to be one of the best alternatives to Microsoft Word. Companies looking to adopt more open sources tools and to reduce operating costs have embraced OpenOffice Writer.
There are a few differences between OpenOffice Writer and Microsoft Word but it is easy to pick up and at certain points can be more advantageous than Microsoft Word.
It is free
Microsoft products are quite expensive. Installing Word in a few systems can be reasonable but imagine installing the software in 100 systems. This can prove to be very expensive for a company, especially if the company is a small or growing business. On the other hand, OpenOffice tools are completely free and can be installed on as many systems needed.
There are no additional charges for updates and newer versions are automatically updated onto the computers. You can even get additional plug-ins, apps and other extensions for your OpenOffice Writer for no additional cost.
Change it according to your needs
If you have great programmers and software developers in your firm (or hire freelancers from sites like Toptal or alternatives), you can get them to customize OpenOffice tools for you. This is the beauty of open source software. You can download them for free, take it apart and change it completely to suit your needs and even upload your version so that others can enjoy your software.
With OpenOffice Writer, you can modify the software to suit your firm and its unique needs without the fear of breaking legal agreements and without having to pay to be able to modify the software.
Runs on any platform
Another big advantage with open source tools like the OpenOffice.org suite is that they can run on systems with any operating system. Although Windows is the most popular operating system, more and more users are using Mac and open source operating systems like Linux. OpenOffice tools work much better on open source operating systems like Linux. Moreover, OpenOffice tools are also better suited to work on older systems than Microsoft Office tools.
This means that if you have a lot of old computers in your company that don’t have the required 1GB RAM (for 32-bit computers) and 2GB RAM (for 64-bit systems) hardware configurations, you don’t have to throw them out. You can install OpenOffice tools and use them.
Photo by Ian Lynch, Licenced under the Apache License, Version 2.0
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