A replacement for Microsoft Office
I suppose the most common use of personal computers these days is for the internet, both surfing the web and email, and word processing.
There have been many word processors over the years, and even going back long before Windows was around.
But the big advantage with Windows based word processors is that they use WYSIWYG, or What You See Is What You Get.
The most commonly used word processor for Windows is, I would imagine, Word for Windows. But it is not the only one. Nor is it necessarily the best.
Word comes as part of a suite of applications, known collectively as Microsoft Office. But it is not the only office suite available.
OpenOffice.org, and they do like to have the .org included in the name, is an open source, free office suite.
Included in the suite are all the usual favourites
I haven't used all of these applications. For example, I don't like PowerPoint, and so I don't think I am likely to be impressed by Impress.
However, the others all do a good job. They are compatible with the Microsoft packages, some more easily than others. But for most of us we won't see much difference.
For example, You can open a Microsoft Word document in Writer. The user interface is a little different from Word but you will get used to it fairly quickly. Documents you create in Writer can also be saved in Word format.
If there is any criticism it is that it takes slightly longer to open the application than Word does, but it is only a minor criticism.
Microsoft Office is one of the most pirated pieces of software on the planet. You don't need to use an illegal copy, and you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars buying a legal copy. Just download OpenOffice.org and you can have the entire office suite available for absolutely no cost.
This is definitely one to get and try. I promise you will not be disappointed.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.