I’m of course talking about Open Office. The best argument there is to choose Open Office to MS Office is it’s free.

This doesn’t mean it is a bare bones suite of applications. It is quite robust. I prefer Open Office Writer, for instance, to MS Word. For one it can save documents in both Open Office Writer format (.odt) and MS Word format (.doc). This means I can pass on documents to colleagues who only have MS Word and to others who may only have Open Office. OO also has versions for Windows, Linux and Mac for an even wider reach.

OO Writer has all the functionalities that you would need to be productive whether you use it personally or in the office. It has the all-important mail merge for sending out copies of a single letter to different recipients. I made a simple video on how to do this, which you can view here.

Personally I like the “Export to PDF” function of the Writer. In easy steps you can convert a document to .pdf format. PDF is another document format that the major operating systems can read. And if you’re into creating e-books, this certainly comes in handy.

You can also create letterheads with OO Writer. I’ll create a video in the next few days that instructs how to do this.

In short, if you want functionality and productivity in writing documents but without a hefty price, Open Office is the way to go.

You can get Open Office at their site at http://openoffice.org