Open Office 2.0 released last week

Don't know how I missed it, but Open Office 2.0 was officially released on October 20. (I wonder if that was intentional? version 2.0 on october 20?) Open Office is a suite of programs that effectively replaces Microsoft Office. If you don't have Microsoft Office installed already, you can get virtually the same functionality of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access with o.o. Writer, Impress, Calc, and Base.

That doesn't mean that your Word macros and Powerpoint presentations will import flawlessly, since Microsoft doesn't publish the format for its document (.DOC) files. That said, to a large measure you can import Office files without pain and use them immediately. On a biweekly basis, I use Calc to open large Excel files (1000 rows, 40 columns), add things, search, and export them to other formats without any problems. Most of my experience has been with Open Office 1.9.95, so it's time for me to upgrade.

Open Office files are technically saved as XML format. Unlike Microsoft documents, the o.o. document format is an "open document" format, which means that programmers and external applications can read them. Open Office won't cost you a dime. Give it a whirl.