Product Reviews

We've always been impressed by OpenOffice. Not because it's better than Microsoft Office - it isn't. Not because it's better looking than Microsoft Office, either. Again, it isn't. What's kept us hooked over the last few years, as it's crept to the point where the two are now all but neck and neck on features, is the extraordinary value for money. It's completely free.

OpenOffice runs on Windows, Linux and Solaris, and comprises the usual raft of office applications, with a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc) and presentation module (Impress) at the fore, backed up by database and drawing tools. All can import Microsoft-formatted files to an impressive degree, and can be set to export in Microsoft native formats for use in mixed-suite environments.

This latest release has been a while in the making, so we were keen to see how it compared with the previous edition, which won our last office suites group test, as well as the commercial StarOffice, designed for larger organisations.

writer

Writer, along with Calc, is inevitably what people will use most. To test compatibility, we loaded up a complex Word 2000 marketing document, making full use of Microsoft Word's formatting options, with complex composite images made up from tiled GIFs overlaid by markers, shaded boxes and a wide range of font and paragraph styles. Without exception, Writer picked them all up, perfectly mimicking the Word original and placing them all in line - something we've never seen before. The only difference was the way Writer showed us the edges of image frames, which by default are invisible in Word, and isn't a problem as they won't print.

It didn't do quite so well when we tested more esoteric formatting options in a document of our own creation. A rotated JPEG was straightened, pushing down some of the text that should have appeared beside it, while a vector image had lost its colouring. An embedded chart was properly rendered, though, and our garish sample of WordArt was rendered in the same colours and size in Writer as Word, although the edges of the characters were more jagged in OpenOffice's version.

However, its WordArt equivalent - which it calls Fontwork - is far more accomplished, with a dedicated 3D panel giving you access to a raft of extrusion options, and even control over lighting from any one of eight directions.

What we were most impressed by, though, were the built-in image-editing tools. Certainly, they won't put Photoshop out of work, but when unleashed on a photo they let you set transparency and apply a range of surprisingly sophisticated filters. The former option will be useful if you want to reduce the impact of an image you're setting under text, while the latter lets you sharpen blurred images, blur sharp ones, tweak individual colour channels and even remove noise in badly compressed snaps. And that's before you get into the less tasteful options.

We were pleased to see that OpenOffice has moved the Wordcount option from a subsection of the file menu, where it always looked out of place. Also impressive is the revamped Mail merge, although it still lags behind Microsoft Office for simplicity.

calc

The spreadsheet has been beefed up, now holding twice as many rows as it once did (now 65,536 to match Excel), but its charting tools could still do better. If you're starting graphs from scratch, there's no cause for complaint, but we found that when importing a graph from Excel the most extreme value on the Y axis wasn't high enough to stop it shearing off the top of the highest peak, spoiling an otherwise excellent effort that saw it retain the smooth curves we had set in Excel; lesser suites opt for simple lines at angles to one another.

Likewise, while it did put our chart on a dedicated page, it wasn't an unlined charting page like the ones in Excel, but an empty-boxed spreadsheet.

Conditional formatting holds greater promise. We set up a simple spreadsheet in Excel that would switch the colour of negative figures to red. Opening it in Calc brought forth no surprises. Whether or not you like the way in which you have to establish new formatting rules when doing this from scratch, though, depends on how you feel about style sheets. Whereas Excel presents you with a simple, unified dialog combining a field into which you enter your condition with a standard font and colour picker to define the styling, Calc expects you to have first set up the style you want to use in the Styles and Formatting palette. This is good because it ensures well-thought-out results that will present well when printed alongside other spreadsheets using the same

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styles, but at the same time it's inconvenient, as you have to look at more than one palette to define the conditional formatting you want to apply.

Grouped cells import well, and we actually prefer Calc's implementation to Excel. Where the latter puts the expansion and contraction button for revealing hidden cells in the margin of the last column or row in the group, Calc places it alongside the first. Excel's implementation lines up your expansion point with the first exposed cell outside of your defined group, which is illogical, whereas Calc very clearly indicates the point at which the group stops as being the border between the last cell in the group and the first cell outside of it. This comes into its own where you have positioned two grouped sets beside each other, in which case with Excel you're more inclined to open the wrong one.

We were also highly impressed by the Function Wizard, which is more extensive than that provided by Excel, and once you've picked your function acronym it matches Excel's walkthroughs.

impress

Impress is OpenOffice's presentation module, and we again found little to fault in terms of PowerPoint compatibility. With a reorganised interface, which was something we criticised in the previous release, it even feels like you're using Microsoft's market leader. We imported a short presentation using far more styles and transitions than you should ever inflict on a captive audience, and Impress swallowed them without a pause for breath. Previous editions had trouble replicating certain PowerPoint transitions, but even the 'box in' and 'checkerboard across' wipes were properly imported, and matched the original for speed and orientation. Indeed, the only criticism we could throw its way was the same as for Writer: WordArt was slightly better rendered in PowerPoint than it was in Impress.

Custom animations run to an impressive 51 entrance and exit settings. Like those in PowerPoint, these are separated into plain English categories such as basic, exciting or moderate, to help avoid presentation embarrassments. There's also a healthy selection of motion paths, since you're denied PowerPoint's tool for defining a path of your own.

the visuals

Beyond core features, the suite as a whole has been given a lick of paint, with a new interface that finally makes it look like an accomplished set of co-ordinated apps. Granted, it still isn't as pretty as Word and Excel, but neither is it as clumsy as StarOffice 7 or OpenOffice 1.

The menus have had a rethink, and the suite as a whole takes its design cues from the OS, so it finally looks like a 'proper' Windows application.

The suite-wide file format has changed, too, moving towards open standards. It has switched to the OASIS OpenDocument schema, as supported by IBM, Novell and Red Hat, which make up the OASIS consortium. It's open source, which could be enough to ensure widespread adoption, making it more likely that this could become the industry standard in years to come, particularly as the European Union has welcomed it (along with the new XML format in Office 12) as the basis of all cross-platform document use.

Of course, there are quirks. We don't like the way it resolves file-sharing conflicts by opening a file in read-only mode without warning. When it does, it blocks you from making edits, so you won't lose any work, but at the same time it's unable to tell you who is working on the file in question the way Microsoft Office would do, so you can't chase them down and get them to close it.

Likewise, Britain takes a back seat in terms of templates; though there are presets for Korea, China and a range of European countries, we get lumped in with the US, which opts for letter-size paper rather than A4, for example.

There's also no PIM, but with Outlook Express bundled as part of Windows, and Mozilla touting its Sunbird (calendar) and Thunderbird (email) applications, the gap isn't impossible to fill.

Fortunately, the suite's bundled database is adequate compensation. It's fully conversant in MySQL and Access formats and the Form Wizard will now produce cross-platform database applications, saving you the time and expense of hard-coding from scratch.

Overall, we're both surprised and impressed at just how closely OpenOffice is tracking Microsoft here. It has always been a good alternative for anyone with limited funds or an aversion to the market leader, but more often than not you'd have to work hard to justify to an IT department why they should go down this route. In this latest release, with its close-to-seamless recognition of native Microsoft files and integrated PDF creation, the tables have turned, and it's Microsoft Office that should require the more serious justification where budgets are concerned.

For personal use, there are even fewer reasons to choose Microsoft. OpenOffice certainly doesn't lack features compared to the market leader, and most of its ease-of-use issues stem from people's familiarity with Microsoft Office rather than an inherent problem with the program itself. As such, you should certainly try OpenOffice's offering before donating another £100 or more to Microsoft's coffers. After all, it's free.