Open Office

Overall Rating

(1 - 5 penguins)

Name of company or service provider.

Sun Microsystems.

Name of product(s) or service(s) or categories of Product types or
service types.

OpenOffice.org Software

Description of Product type or service.

OpenOffice.org is a full office suite to replace Microsoft Office and it has so many features, file formats, and the interface people have come to expect from Office. It's all around a great product. It has Writer, Calc, and Impress (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and many more programs such as an Microsoft access clone. It also has a nice HTML editor.

Rate the policy or agreement based on fairness and how much they trust the customer (1-5 penguins) And post a link to the current agreement at that time and date in a saved .pdf file that is on a private page or server so that it can't be altered by the company. Provide a link to their current agreement.

The GNU Public License agreement is what they use. Nuff said.

User Reviews. if you can find them on line or reviews by other sites. (average their ratings and boil them all down into one 1 - 5 rating.

CNet / Download.com rates it and the users rate it .5.

Product or service quality, value, Bang per buck ratio.

Yes the price for OpenOffice.org on CD is well worth the price in comparison to their competitors. If you buy their Books they are also well worth the price. Of course you can get all of this for free but what would the fun be in that?

Similar products or services from other companies.

Microsoft Office, Star Office, and Microsoft Works.
Not that I like Microsoft Works in any way but opening the documents in OpenOffice.org can be a pain unless you install extra plugins that will convert Works files. Microsoft Office 2003 is ok but it has a very hard time opening Office 2007 files even with the converter. Microsoft Office 2007 is ok but it saves in a bad format and it's harder to learn if you are use to the old Office XP, 2000, 97, or 2003 interface. Star Office is good for Macs but OpenOffice.org still seems to have more features and now works on the Mac as well. (Don't take my word for it. Try it out on a Mac and tell me)

Shipping rates, handling, and do they offer USPS, UPS, FEDEX or what? Do the items arrive broken? How long does it take for them to ship them out.

They ship fast and they use USPS. The books arrive in a nice cardboard protective shell with a receipt.

Payment Methods. I.E. PayPal, credit card, google checkout, Direct deposit, etc.

You can pay via Credit Card to receive books or CDs from OpenOffice.org.

Any personal experiences.

I love OpenOffice.org for a bunch of reasons:
1. I can convert my .doc files into .pdf files without needing to learn how to use some kind of Adobe PDF creator program.
2. I can open Microsoft Office 2007 files if I add plugins and OpenOffice.org plans on including this functionality with their new release.
3. I can open Microsoft Office files and set it up to save in Microsoft Office formats so that users will be able to share and collaborate with their Microsoft friends. (Richard Stallman does not like us using Microsoft formats but I don't think that we can attract as many new users without saving in that format)

Would the average consumer expect to have any of the problems mentioned here on a regular basis or is this something that they would have to be a customer for a long time before they experienced?

Yes. OpenOffice.org will not save in .doc .xls. or .ppt format by default. You must go into the options and load save options and set up the format options so that it will save in Microsoft Office friendly formats or only OpenOffice.org will be able to open the files.

Does this company outsource? If so how much is outsourced?

Yes they do outsource but this is a good thing because they collaborate with others and money is not leaving the US in order to further OpenOffice's design.

If you buy their product or service for a small fee do you end up
paying more in the end?

No. In fact by purchasing OpenOffice.org from them instead of downloading it you can get more artwork. You can also buy their manuals for $17.00 instead of downloading the pdf versions. It's a good investment.

Linux compatibility

with everything from Mac, to Windows, and Linux.