Everyone who uses OpenOffice.org knows that this gigantic application suite is designed primarily as a free, plug-in replacement for Microsoft Office, complete with support for Microsoft's formats and a feature set that comes close to matching Microsoft's. Everyone knows this even if nothing on the OpenOffice.org Web page explicitly says so. If you don't look closely, you'll think you're using components from the seven-year-old Office XP. OpenOffice.org Writer looks and feels like Word; OpenOffice.org Calc resembles Excel; and OpenOffice.org Impress resembles PowerPoint. The suite diverges from Office in its remaining three modules: Draw, Base, and Math. OpenOffice.org Draw is a vector graphics package that resembles the drawing tools in Office. OpenOffice.org Base works with databases in its own XML-based format as well as MySQL, dBASE, older Microsoft Access formats, and other standard formats. OpenOffice.org Math is a straightforward equation editor. On the whole, this suite struck me as powerful and stable enough for enterprise-level use, although its dreary-looking interface didn't make me want to keep it on my personal desktop.
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