On the photo page is a spreadsheet that I created in 2002 on Microsoft Excel 97. It opens and works perfectly with OpenOffice "Calc"

Open Office is a complete office suite that is compatible with the "King" of office suites, Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program and even a database in an easy to use but powerful package. The database is not compatible with Microsoft Access (to my knowledge) but is easy to use, making it preferable to many as a replacement for Access, which can be daunting to learn.

Two of my favorite features in the word processor (OpenOffice Write) are that label & business card templates are easy to find, being in the File/New menu, and a document can be directly saved as a PDF (Portable Document Format) which can be viewed on any computer.

Best thing about OpenOffice is the same as the best thing about "The GIMP": It's FREE! Once I even gave a friend a copy of my "Heart Rate Training Calculator" excel spreadsheet along with OpenOffice just in case she didn't have anything to open it with.

Second best thing about OpenOffice is it's open-source, it's been ported to both Macintosh and Windows so I can really get proficient with using one word processor, one spreadsheet program and one presentation (slideshow) program. I like simple and easy.

"Open Source" software has something uniquely superior to commercial software. It is community developed by volunteers who test, tweak, program and polish new and improved versions of the software. OpenOffice gets better with every new release. So does "The GIMP" and Ubuntu.