Desktop Productivity Applications

• Open Office - "OpenOffice.org the product is a multi-platform office productivity suite. It includes the key desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to other office suites. Sophisticated and flexible, OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office, and the vendor-neutral OpenDocument standard from OASIS. Available in over 65 supported languages with more being constantly added by the community, OpenOffice.org runs stably and natively on Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), Windows, Mac OS X (X11), and numerous other platforms. Our porting page lists the platforms (ports) that OpenOffice.org can run on. Written in C++ and with documented APIs licensed under the LGPL open-source license, OpenOffice.org allows any knowledgeable developer to benefit from the source. And, because the native file format for OpenOffice.org is the vendor-independent OpenDocument open standard, interoperability is easy, making future development and adoption more certain."
• AbiWord "AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for a wide variety of word processing tasks."
• Scribus "Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation."
• ESS-Pro - Effective/Employee Shift Scheduling Program, T3 Technologies own open source project. A MySQL-based database system with a web interface front-end, written in PHP. The program can automatically generate an employee work schedule based on shift requirements and employee availability. It will also provide an estimated labor cost for the schedule generated and a back-up employee coverage list. It was designed with 24/7 operations in mind and can support multiple and overlapping shift definitions.

Further Information

• Microsoft PowerPoint versus OpenOffice.org Impress
• OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org - Idealware does a head-to-head comparison of the two office suites
• Office 2003 vs. OpenOffice.Org
• Test drive challenge: Office 2007 vs. OpenOffice 2.0