[another_someone]

Yep - any decent word processor will give word and character counts (anyone writing professionally will want to know how many words their article contains).

[paul.fr]

Yep - any decent word processor will give word and character counts (anyone writing professionally will want to know how many words their article contains).

George, how does your free software compare with MS? i always thought of trying what you have but never knew anyone that used it.

[another_someone]

There are some subtle differences in operation, but unless you are doing something particularly sophisticated, you won't see those difference; and where you are doing something complex, then sometimes one is better, and sometimes the other.

One thing I do like about Open Office is that you can create PDF output directly from it.

One thing I don't like about it is that while Open Office will read current MS Office documents, you can get filters for MS office to allow you to read documents from lots of archaic WP's (such as DisplayWrite, or Word 6 for DOS - although not found one for Ashton Tate's MultiMate yet). but none of these filters exist for Open Office.

Another problem that you will have with Open Office is if your document contains VBA macros - but for most private individuals, this is not a problem they will normally worry about, although some corporates that use MS Office for complex work flow processes and alike, this might be more of an issue.

[paul.fr]

can you read excell documents in open office?

[another_someone]

can you read excell documents in open office?

Yes - it covers the big 3 - Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  In all 3 cases, it does a very good job of importing and exporting files from the MS format, and even making itself the default product to open MS files for that function.

It also has a diagram drawing program, and a database program, and a maths equation editor (although I have found this last one pretty hopeless); but I don't think any of these strive for strong compatibility with their MS counterparts (i.e. OpenOffice Base is not Access, not compatible with it, but merely seeks to provide some similarity of function).

[dentstudent]

Is it a big program? Íf it has the capacity for PDF, then it sounds like a winner! It has to be better than the awful XP office....

There's a nice overview in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

[another_someone]

Is it a big program?

Just looked at the size of the download (the unpacked programs are inevitably larger) and it covers 97MB.  Not something you want to do on dial-up, but not at all onerous over DSL.