by DAN CALLOWAY
Published 2 March 2010
WEAVERVILLE, NC – Are you still driving your documents with Microsoft Word? Are you letting your friends get behind the Microsoft “wheel” when they’ve had too much to write? Well, it’s time that you woke up and smelled the coffee, because “friends 
don’t let friends use Microsoft Word.”
So, what should you let your friends use? Let them use what most smart people use these days…OpenOffice.org 3.11.
OpenOffice.org 3.11 or OOo3.11 as it is alternatively written, is a very classic, scalable, and efficient office suite package that is compatible with MS Office 97/2000/2003/2007. The difference between these two office suite packages is the former package is absolutely free while the second office suite of applications can cost you both an arm and a leg.
Great Software:
OpenOffice.org 3 is the result of over twenty years’ software engineering. Designed from the start as a single piece of software, it has a consistency other products cannot match. A completely open development process means that anyone can report bugs, request new features, or enhance the software. The result: OpenOffice.org 3 does everything you want your office software to do, the way you want it to.
Easy to Use:
OpenOffice.org 3 is easy to learn, and if you’re already using another office software package, you’ll take to OpenOffice.org 3 straight away. OpenOffice.org 3′s world-wide native-language community means that OpenOffice.org 3 is probably available and supported in your own language. And if you already have files from another office package – OpenOffice.org 3 will probably read them with no difficulty.
And, It’s Free:
Best of all, OpenOffice.org 3 can be downloaded and used entirely free of any license fees. OpenOffice.org 3 is released under the LGPL license. This means you may use it for any purpose – domestic, commercial, educational, public administration. You may install it on as many computers as you like. You may make copies and give them away to family, friends, students, employees – anyone you like.
So, the next time you and your friends are writing and your friend wants to use Microsoft Word, take away the “keys” to his/her laptop and let them use your laptop with OpenOffice.org 3.11. Why? Because friends don’t let friends use Microsoft Word.
I say, don’t let friends use Microsoft’s Worst.
Very cute. My son would love it if I would convert, but not being very computer saavy, changing horses in mid-stream is really difficult for me, so I just stick with the tried and true.
I totally understand where you’re coming from and I empathize. I also understand that Bill has you where he wants you. Like sheep we are led to slaughter.
I really appreciate what you blog about here, very refreshing and intelligent. One issue though, I’m running Firefox on Fedora and parts of your site structure are a little off. I realize it’s not a popular setup, but it is still something to watch out for. Just tossing you a heads up.
OpenOffice has a pretty low learning curve. The interface is a little different, but the concepts remain the same just as in any office style package. But I would also mention Google docs as another easy to use and free platform for document creation. It’s not as feature rich as OO or Word, but your documents are always accessible online and it allows you to download it in several well known formats. Of course this opens a whole new debate on the security of your information given that it’s stored with Google. I ain’t skeered
Which version of Firefox are you running in Fedora? I’m running Firefox 3.6 in Ubuntu and my site comes up just fine. I haven’t used Fedora Linux before but the OS shouldn’t really matter. The Web browser is the concern and TCW appears to be rendered properly in that browser.
Great article, hey I stumbled on to this post while googling for mp3s. Thanks for sharing I’ll tell my friends about this too.