1. Open Source: How Companies Can Create Profit Sara Shaik

2. Product Overview

Leading open-source software suit for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.

3. Available in many languages and works on all common computers. 4. Read/Write files from other common office software packages. 5. Above all its free of charge for any purpose! 6. System Requirements Description OpenOffice.org Microsoft Office 2007 Hardware architecture PC Sun SPARC PC Memory 128MB 512MB Hard Disk Space 350 MB + 130MB optional languages Standard:1.5GBPro:2.0 GBUltimate:3.0GBVideo 800x600 or high-res graphic device256 colors Super VGA (1024X7686) or higher 256+ colors OS Supported Windows 98, ME Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista Solaris OE Linux x86 OS X Windows XP, 2003, Vista OS X 7. Word ProcessingHTML/Web Publishing

Word 2007 and OpenOffice.org software offer similar word processing functionality. Writer however shows its strength in handling long documents.

8. OpenOffice.org software provides advanced HTML creations, easy HTML creation code handling and URL links built into OpenOffice.org software 9. OpenOffice.org is better ableto handle web documents being streamed from HTML/PHP and other languages. 10. Spreadsheet/Charting

OpenOffice.org software offers the spreadsheet functionality very similar to Excel. Both are highly programmable applications, with hundreds of built-in functions. OpenOffice.org Software's language independent API's make adding more functionally very easy.

11. A Variety of Charting options are available in both the suites.79 different chart types in OpenOffice.org vs. 73 in Office. 12. Database

Open office provides a powerful database front-end

13. Autopilots helping you at the creation of database tables, forms, reports and queries. 14. Use the powerful HSQL file format to save your forms, reports and queries with the data in a single file.

Microsoft office provides the access database with the Professional version of the office suite only!

15. Ease of Use

OpenOffice.org software provides excellent context menus (accessible by right mouse clicking), giving users quick access to functionality relevant to the task at hand and keeps the traditional way of working with a windows application.

16. Also OpenOffice.org Software utilizes the concept everything in one place so all tools to perform a related task are grouped together, making them easier to find. 17. Cost Analysis

OpenOffice.org is free; however,for U.S. based non-profit organizations,Office 2003 is alsoalmostfree. For the rest of us we are looking at $400 to $680.

18. Updates to OpenOffice.org are also free. Microsoft has suite updates where the entire program changes costing us between $240 to $540. 19. OpenOffice.org has code beyond a company... Because the source code is available, OpenOffice is not dependent on its current crop of developers. Good code does not disappear even if the company falters. 20. OpenOffice uses Open Standards... any other software that supports these standards can read and write OpenOffice.org documents. 21. Presenter Sara Shaik

Systems Analyst Northwestern University [email_address]