Living Open Source

Open Source Software:– No More PowerPoint

May 10th, 2007 by Tim 8

When you buy a new PC, you always forget to include another £200-£300 for a version of Microsoft Office, which these days doubles the price of a new PC. Church people irritatingly call those projector things “PowerPoint”, brainwashed with the Microsoft way and willingly hand over bundles of cash for Office. But there is another way!

Open Office has been around a while, but it continues to mature and develop. It is open source, free and can handle all your Office documents in their native format. Most of the bundled applications work in very similar ways to Office. There is Writer (looks like Word), Impress (time to drop the Powerpoint), Calc (works like Excel), Base (almost as good as Access) and Draw (actually Office doesn’t have an equivalent for this one).

As pointed out by the JediMoose on the last post in this series, OpenOffice can also export PDF files.

Many organisations, businesses and government bodies are using OpenOffice as their standard desktop office suite. So stop calling your data projector PowerPoint, save some money, download OpenOffice and start Impressing people instead.

You can also download an information flyer for Open Office.

8 Comments on the Comment Wall

1 On May 10th, 2007 at 11:23 am mrben said:

Woohoo – I’m famous
2 On May 10th, 2007 at 1:55 pm Jeff Hanlon said:

If your needs are basic internet, email, instant messaging and office applications, go one better than Open Office and install Ubuntu or another of its Linux-based, open source operating systems: http://www.ubuntu.com . It’s leaner, more secure and in many ways more versatile than Windows. Open Office and Firefox come with the package.

I am assembling a system for a non-profit group at the moment and will be saving them well over $300 CDN by installing Ubuntu and Open Office, not to mention the potential savings by avoiding virus and spyware attacks and overuse of the system’s resources.
3 On May 17th, 2007 at 10:25 am viu said:

And ubuntu has alsu Christian edition, called UbuntuCE
4 On May 17th, 2007 at 11:25 am Tim said:

No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
5 On November 16th, 2007 at 3:27 pm Living Open Source » Poll: Did PowerPoint help or hinder the sermon in church last Sunday? said:

[...] say PowerPoint, but of course you’d be better off with Impress. But if the preacher used pictures and words on a screen to get his point across, did it [...]
6 On November 21st, 2007 at 6:06 pm Joni Solis said:

Can you add music or audio (talking) to Impress presentations?
7 On November 21st, 2007 at 7:04 pm Tim said:

You can add video or sound/music clips to a presentation that play automatically or when clicked. I think this is similar to PowerPoint.
8 On April 14th, 2008 at 8:16 pm Living Open Source » The One Way said:

[...] can also download a slide background for Impress (or PowerPoint if you haven’t caught [...]