Open Office

One of the programs I chose to download was Open Office.  I have never heard before that there was a free program that allowed you to read and manipulate Microsoft Office files so I was sort of interested in this, particularly whether or not there was a mobile application as I do not have any software on my mobile devices that will allow for this usage and I did not want to pay for the Microsoft version. I did find a mobile app for the software and downloaded it on my cell phone though I have not had a chance to fully investigate it yet.

One thing that I didn't like about Open Office is that the download included a bunch of other programs that I did not intent to install and I did not see an option in the install wizard to opt out of them.  I don't like having a bunch of junk on my computer, so this was an unpleasant discovery for me.

As far as the operation of the software itself, I found that all of the offered programs were extremely similar to the Microsoft versions, as they should be given the purpose of the program. The layout is very similar as well, though I noticed that there is a tool bar on the right side the screen as well as the top of the screen.  Many of the tools there are duplicated from the top toolbar, at least in the Properties group but there were others that were different in other groups.  I actually like this feature, especially that there was a Gallery group that allowed you to add photos to your document easily. You can do the same thing in Microsoft Word, this just seemed a little easier to me.

As a whole I like this software and I think that it is very cool and progressive of the programmers to create this type of software.  It helps eliminate the monopoly that Microsoft has created and charges a great deal for.