how safe is openoffice.org and what would be the closest thing to Microsoft for me to download?

Question

When i opened the site there was a lot of unfamilier terminology( im kinda new to all this) so can somebody give me step by step through the process.ie what office and what platform?? thanks

Answer 1

Open Office is absolutely safe. And it is the closest thing there is to MS Office. It works very well, and has allot of features. If you can't afford MS Office (most of us can't) then Open Office is the way to go.

Answer 2

OpenOffice is great stuff (in my humble opinion) and alot easier to use than Office. There's a book on it, you can buy. It can create all the standard Office files (like, .doc for Word, and so on). I'll give you three disadvantages, right off the bat:
(1) If you're on a slow connection (or maybe, even if you're not!) beware that OpenOffice is a GREAT BIG piece of software and takes quite awhile to download! It's free, but, if it'll strain your patience to wait that long for a download, then you might want to consider spending the $15 or so to buy the CD from Amazon or places like that...
(2) You might want to consider buying the book...as an aid to learning all the wonders. (Just as you might for Office...)
(3) OOo doesn't have an equivalent for Outlook, so if you want to have an offline email handler, you'll have to find another, like, say, Thunderbird (free) or something else (Outlook Express?)

Answer 3

The first two answers are correct and, as Openoffice is Opensource Microsoft earlier this year signed a deal with Novell which is Opensource Operating System which is more and more being used by the business world as well as the home user.