OpenOffice 3.0 beta

Writer

Most people will likely spend the majority of their time in Writer, the OpenOffice word processor. The design is simple and straightforward - a menu atop two toolbars, one for formatting, and one called Standard, which has the usual functions you would expect: opening and closing files, spell-checking, redo and undo, search and so on. There are a wide variety of other toolbars you can add from the View menu, such as for drawing and creating bullets.

You'll find all the tools you need for performing almost all word processing functions, whether it be simple ones such as formatting and creating tables, or more sophisticated ones, such as comparing documents and doing mail merges. In fact, for well over 90 per cent of what most people do with their word processor, there's no real difference between Writer and Microsoft Word. How important that other 10 per cent is to you will determine whether you're willing to pay for Office or instead use the free OpenOffice.

For example, Writer doesn't include Word's smart paste feature that lets you decide, when pasting text into a document, whether to use the text's original formatting or your document's formatting. And it doesn't include other features, such as Word's Quick Parts (formerly known as AutoText) that lets you create complex building blocks of text, formatting, and graphics that you easily organise and re-use. In addition, it doesn't come with nearly as many pre-built templates as does Word.

Calc

Calc, like Writer, will handle over 90 per cent of what you use a spreadsheet for. In addition, one of Calc's new features is nice: the ability to collaborate with others via workbook sharing.

In our tests, Calc imported Excel spreadsheets without problems, and created them in Excel format as well. It saves files in an impressive array of formats, including ODF and OpenOffice formats, numerous Excel formats, .HTML files, .csv files, dbase, files, and others. Like Writer, it can also export files to PDF.

It includes all the spreadsheet functions you would expect, and includes charting features as well, although here again it falls short compared to Excel 2007. You won't find as many chart types and designs, and you can't customise charts to the same degree, either.

We found one problem: we were unable to edit charts created in Excel 2007; when we imported them into Calc, they turned into graphics.

Impress

This presentation program is particularly useful for those who don't create a lot of presentations, because by default it starts with a wizard-based interface. The wizard walks you through creating a basic presentation: choosing a template, background, transition effects, types of slides, and so on. Fill in the content, create new slides or delete existing ones, edit what you've got, and you're done. It's all exceedingly simple. If you don't like using wizards, you can simply turn it off.

Editing the presentation and individual slides is simple as well. A set of "tasks" appears on the right-hand side of the screen, including those for slide layouts, table design, and animation effects. Fill in the form for the task, and you're done.

As with other components of OpenOffice, Impress falls short when it comes to templates and backgrounds. You get very few of them, and the ones you get won't exactly impress your audience. So if you're someone who frequently creates presentations, and constantly needs new templates and backgrounds, you may be in trouble.