OpenOffice Word Processor

I’m playing with a new toy I just got for myself. It’s nothing fancy, just a new writing program called OpenOffice.org. I’ve seen it mentioned around the net a few times and because it’s free, I thought I’d give it a try. Up to this point, I’ve been using Microsoft WordPerfect because it came with my Dell computer. But with a whole new year upon us, I thought I’d try something new for a change of pace.

I’m not one who usually enjoys leaving my comfort zone, and I knew how to use WordPerfect inside and out. So, it took me awhile to get used to this new program and I’m still learning the ins and outs of the whole thing. There are some pretty cool features that come with OpenOffice, such as word completion. As you’re typing out a certain word, the program sort of finishes it up for you. I’m not sure I like this function, as I type to fast to pay attention to what’s being put in front of me, and it’s kind of annoying.

One of the features I do like about this program is that you can automatically create PDF files with the click of a button. Now, many of you bloggers might not understand what that means, but for those who write e-books, it’s a given. Anytime you write something that is to be read in Adobe Reader, it’s in a PDF file. For a long time, you had to buy a special program from Adobe in order to make this happen. I think the program was like $100 or something like that. I don’t remember for sure, but that’s because I about choked on the idea of spending that kind of money and waited until someone came out with a freeware product that did the same thing. Now, I can do it as soon as I’m done writing whatever it is that I happen to be writing.

OpenOffice also comes with a bunch of other applications, most of which I’ll probably never use. There is one application that does nothing but calculate mathematic equations. No, won’t be needing that one, unless my daughter gets stuck on an Algebra problem at school. There is also a spreadsheet that comes with this program, but it’s pretty basic. There are a lot of templates for different projects, but I’m still not sure what they’re all for. I’m still in the learning phase of this journey.

The only real thing I’m going to have to get used to is in saving my work to my flash drive. Not because it’s hard, but because I have to save everything in a different type of format. Everything I have right now is saved in .wp and I can’t do that with this program. I don’t want to start saving everything in this program’s default format, which is .odt. So, for now I’m saving in .rft format. I just hope I don’t screw up my work because of this. LOL. That would be my luck.

If you’re looking for a free office type word processor, check this one out. I won’t say it’s totally cool, because I don’t know that to be a fact yet. But, I won’t say it sucks because so far it’s been pretty easy to use. It all comes down to what you’re looking for and what you’ll be using it to do. My favorite part of the whole this is that it’s free, and so are all the extensions that come with it. I like free!!!