Saturday, June 25, 2005
Opening new paths
For open source freaks, this is nothing new. But for newbies, who use the PC as if it has just been taken out from the carton, this is a must read. Specially if you have been using proprietary software, particularly the office suite.
A totally free of cost Office package, which includes a word processor, a worksheet, an html composer among other things is making waves all over. Net watchers claim that OpenOffice, a free open source package has already captured 10 per cent of the market. This is a staggering number considering the fact that it has been in the market for three years only, compared to 10 years of Microsoft Office.
Interestingly, Indian users account for one of the largest chunk of downloads. The Word Processor, which is a part of the package has some remarkable features which are missing even in advanced commercial packages, like the ability to create pdf files. Apart from saving your documents as doc files, by the simple click of a button, you can convert it into a pdf document as well. A spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing and diagrams, database access, support for disabled are included in the package.
Since it is open source, the community of developers keeps on adding to its functionality. It already has Hindi, Telugu and Tamil language support, while Punjabi support is being developed. By virtue of being open source, you can be sure that it does not have malware or spyware hidden inside.
Adding to all this, it is exceptionally light compared to other packages and equires just 200 MB of disc space and 128 MB of RAM. In fact the developer community has been very active in providing support to users, which is at times better than the support being provided by commercial vendors.
The openoffice website openoffice.org lists how world over people are shifting to this free package. The City of Munich, the government of Thailand, Sahara computers in South Africa, hospitals in France and hold your breadth even a portion of Wal Mart shippings.
With such a momentum building up, would you prefer to be left behind?
A totally free of cost Office package, which includes a word processor, a worksheet, an html composer among other things is making waves all over. Net watchers claim that OpenOffice, a free open source package has already captured 10 per cent of the market. This is a staggering number considering the fact that it has been in the market for three years only, compared to 10 years of Microsoft Office.
Interestingly, Indian users account for one of the largest chunk of downloads. The Word Processor, which is a part of the package has some remarkable features which are missing even in advanced commercial packages, like the ability to create pdf files. Apart from saving your documents as doc files, by the simple click of a button, you can convert it into a pdf document as well. A spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing and diagrams, database access, support for disabled are included in the package.
Since it is open source, the community of developers keeps on adding to its functionality. It already has Hindi, Telugu and Tamil language support, while Punjabi support is being developed. By virtue of being open source, you can be sure that it does not have malware or spyware hidden inside.
Adding to all this, it is exceptionally light compared to other packages and equires just 200 MB of disc space and 128 MB of RAM. In fact the developer community has been very active in providing support to users, which is at times better than the support being provided by commercial vendors.
The openoffice website openoffice.org lists how world over people are shifting to this free package. The City of Munich, the government of Thailand, Sahara computers in South Africa, hospitals in France and hold your breadth even a portion of Wal Mart shippings.
With such a momentum building up, would you prefer to be left behind?
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]