Institute of Internal Communication

Steve Nichols takes a look at a free alternative to Microsoft Word for the Apple Macintosh and comes away very impressed. If you have been hearing bad things about Office 2008 for Mac, this could be a good alternative.

I am a big fan of open source software. That is, software that can be freely distributed.

OpenOffice.org is Sun Microsystem's open source alternative to Microsoft Office. The program was released with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free, open and high-quality alternative.

It includes modules called Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, Draw and Math. The first four of these equate to Microsoft's Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access, while the other two are a drawing and mathematics package.

OpenOffice.org is available for a number of platforms, including PC, but the Mac version has always been a bit clunky. Without getting technical it had to run on Mac OS X with something called XII. What interested me was the upcoming OpenOffice.org v3.0 “Aqua” release that runs natively on OS X.

As a beta tester I thought it would be a good idea to give the Writer module a thorough test. I was due to be Space and Technology Editor for Flight Daily News at the Berlin Air Show, which involves producing around 2,000 words a day, so what a great opportunity to see if the program handles.

So, with OpenOffice.org loaded onto my Apple MacBook (a svelte 168Mb download by the way) first impressions are that if you can use Microsoft Word you will feel fairly at home with OpenOffice.org. The menus are very similar and intuitive. It also loads within a few seconds – far quicker than the rather bloated MS Office 2008 for Mac.

As journalists we have a unique set of requirements from a word processor. Firstly, I want it to be easy to use, with good on-screen display (it ticks those boxes) and I want easy access to a word count facility (yep, Tools>Word Count does it for me). Beyond that I want instant, reliable, on-screen spell checking in UK English (another tick).

OpenOffice.org gives you a large number of configurable options, some more suitable than others. I liked the auto-correct facility, to which you can add commonly miss-spelled and miss-typed words. This works brilliantly with words like “foreign” - my particular Achilles' heel. If you do misspell a word, right click (or ctrl+left) click gives you options.

I found auto complete a bit of a pain, as the computer tries to guess what it is you are typing – I switched that off. I also configured it to only allow one space after a full stop – a particular nightmare of subs the world over.

Steve Nichols runs InfoTech Communications and is editor of this web site. InfoTech specialises in online communications and Steve has acted as consultant and trainer for many blue-chip companies including Aviva, AWG, Shell, BT, Standard Life, HBOS, BNFL, Accenture and Australia New Zealand Bank.