OpenOffice: Review of OpenOffice.org Office Suite for Macs

Draw is really a companion product to Impress, OpenOffice.org’s presentation software. You can use Draw to spiff up slides, create flowcharts, and create basic vector-based drawings. You can also use Draw to create 3D objects, such as cubes, spheres, and cylinders. While Draw isn’t up to creating a 3D model of the plans for your next house, you can use it to spice up you presentations with simple graphics touches.

Draw provides the usual vector graphics drawing tools: lines, rectangles, ovals, and curves. It also has an assortment of basic shapes that you can pluck down onto your drawing, including standard flowchart images and callout bubbles.

It’s no surprise that Draw integrates well with Impress. You can easily bring slides into Impress and then send the finished slides back to Impress. You can also use Draw to create new slides from scratch to use in Impress. You can also use Draw for basic drawing needs or for creating flowcharts for work-related projects. It isn’t really a general-purpose drawing tool, but it’s a handy tool for adding sparkle to OpenOffice.org’s other applications.

Base is similar to Microsoft Access, database software that is missing from the Mac version of Microsoft Office. Unlike other popular databases for the Mac, such as FileMaker Pro, Base doesn’t hide its internal structures. It requires you to have at least a basic understanding of how a database works.

Bases uses Tables, Views, Forms, Queries, and Reports to work with and create databases. Tables are used to create the structure to hold data. Views allow you to specify which tables, and which fields within a table, will be visible. Queries are ways to filter a database, that is, find specific information about and relationships between data. Queries can be as simple as “show me everyone who placed an order in the past week,” or very complex. Forms allow you to design how your database will look. Forms are a great way to display and enter data in an easy-to-use graphical manner. Reports are a specialized form for displaying the results of queries or the unfiltered data in a table.

You can manually create tables, views, queries, forms, or reports, or you can use Base’s wizards to help you through the process. The wizards are easy to use, and I found that they created just the item I wanted. The Table Wizard is especially helpful, because it includes templates for popular business and personal databases. For instance, you can use the wizard to quickly create a recipe database or an invoicing system for your business.

Base is a powerful database software program that can be difficult for some individuals to use because it requires advanced knowledge of how databases work.

All of the applications included with OpenOffice.org were able to read all of the file types I threw at them, including recent Microsoft Office Word and Excel files. I didn’t try all of the file types that documents can be saved as, but when saving as .doc for text, .xls for Excel, or .ppt for PowerPoint, I had no problems opening and sharing files with Microsoft Office equivalents.

I did notice a few quirks in use. Some windows and dialog boxes were physically large, with excessive amounts of white space or perhaps more technically correct, gray space. I also found the toolbar icons small, and would have preferred more customization options.

In general, I found Write and Calc to be extremely usable, with most of the features most writers will ever need. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not a user of presentation software, but I found Impress easy to use, although somewhat basic compared to applications like PowerPoint. Draw was my least favorite application. It’s very evident that Draw’s primary purpose is to allow you to create graphics for Impress slides, or to create new slides for a presentation. For its intended purpose it works reasonably well, but it didn’t meet my expectations for a general-purpose drawing tool. Base is a reasonably good database application. It offers plenty of capabilities, but lacks an easy-to-use interface, something I’ve grown used to with other Mac database applications.

As a package, OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 earned three stars out of five, although on their own, the Writer and Calc applications deserve at least four stars.

• Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or better
• Intel-based Mac
• 512 MB RAM
• 400 MB hard drive space
• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or later (JRE is included with OS X)