Microsoft's operating-system monopoly has gotten plenty of ink in this paper, but Microsoft Office exerts an even tighter stranglehold on the market. The productivity suite dominates not just on Windows PCs but on Macs as well, and its file formats have become a default language in offices, homes and schools around the world.
All this, even though a new copy of Office ($479) costs more than twice as much as a fresh copy of Windows itself ($199).
Office has had plenty of challengers. So far, it has beaten them all: Some run only on one platform, such as Windows or Linux; some can't reliably read or write Office's poorly documented file formats; some cost too much; some are just too hard to use.
Then, two Wednesdays ago, OpenOffice.org 1.0 arrived, and Microsoft Office's long winning streak may finally screech to a halt. OpenOffice is what many computer users have been waiting and wishing for: It's free, open-source, Office-compatible and cross-platform (Windows, Linux and Solaris, with a Mac OS X version in early development).
After using the Windows version of OpenOffice for the past week and a half, I can attest that it either matches or beats Microsoft Office in features and ease of use, at the cost of slower performance on older computers and the occasional slight garbling of complicated Microsoft Office documents. It's hardly perfect, but somebody in Redmond ought to be worried about this program.
OpenOffice, a 50-megabyte download from www.openoffice.org, includes word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs, comparable to Microsoft Office's Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but lacks an equivalent of Office's Outlook e-mail program/personal information manager.
Next week, Sun Microsystems will release a shrink-wrapped version of OpenOffice, called StarOffice 6.0, for "under $100." Sun's version will include a database program, extra fonts and clip art, support for more file formats (notably, WordPerfect), and better support and training. Otherwise, the two suites are identical -- OpenOffice itself was born in the summer of 2000, when Sun decided to move StarOffice to an open-source license that would allow anybody to read and improve its source code.
Much of the Internet runs on software developed this way, but this strategy is still unusual in a cross-platform office suite.
The results, however, shouldn't look or feel odd to Microsoft users.
I spent most of my time in OpenOffice's Writer program, as I expect most home users would. Its menus trace an arc of commands that should make any Word veteran feel at home, offering all the usual tools and options -- the ability to select separate blocks of text for simultaneous copying, deleting or formatting, page-layout and drawing tools, a formatting wizard, mail merge, revision tracking, footnoting, outlining, HTML export and more.
OpenOffice even starts up with many of the same auto-format mechanisms as Word, plus a pop-up alert that appears when one of them activates (click it and a full-screen window appears to tell how to control that feature). This sort of automation was just as annoying in OpenOffice as in Microsoft Office, but it was also just as quick to shut off.
For all its mimicry, OpenOffice manages to improve on Microsoft's dismal usability in some small, helpful ways. It adds a vertical tool bar, like WordPerfect's, for common shortcuts, and a floating window, like in Microsoft's Office v.X for the Mac, for paragraph styles. OpenOffice's font menu shows each font in its native typeface. You don't have to remember separate keyboard shortcuts to find and replace text. The thesaurus isn't hidden behind a sub-menu. And so on -- it's like using Word after I've spent 30 minutes rearranging its interface.
This program's one real failing as a writing tool is its word-count function, which is concealed inside the File menu and can't measure selected text, just the entire document.
The OpenOffice suite opened every Word, Excel and PowerPoint file I tried. Most looked identical or nearly so. One even looked better than in Word -- OpenOffice showed an embedded author's note without my having to turn on the revision-tracking option.
The exceptions were all at the margins and never kept me from a document's substance. The graphics in a few letterheads came out misaligned or shrunken, a moderately ornate résumé appeared with bogus indents, an expense-form spreadsheet no longer fit on one page, and some PowerPoint presentations lost a 3-D effect or a thumbnail image.
OpenOffice's developers still have work to do here. But let's be realistic, too: In the untidy world of different program versions, settings and fonts, the only way to guarantee perfect reproduction is to save a file in Portable Document Format.
You can set OpenOffice to save in Microsoft's formats exclusively, or you can use its own, more efficient file format -- which OpenOffice's developers have documented online, so other programmers can support it in their own software.
OpenOffice's worst trade-off is its performance. On the sclerotic PC I use at work, it sometimes took as long as seven seconds to open a new window, and selecting and moving text could get jerky. Parts of this suite just feel too complicated and clumsy for everyday use. You know, like Microsoft Office.
Free and adequate looks enticing compared with expensive and adequate. I also suspect OpenOffice's developers will find and fix problems quicker than Microsoft could.
One example: I was annoyed enough by the limited, hidden word-count function to file a feature request at the OpenOffice.org Web site. Two days later, I saw that my report had been assigned a tracking number and a programmer, with his e-mail address listed.
When's the last time Microsoft responded to its Office customers like that?
Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro at rob@twp.com.
