OpenOffice.org is a free and open-source productivity suite. It provides in a single package an alternative to Microsoft Office products. The project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems and many first-class technology companies have made code contributions to it. Thus, it is available on nearly all major platforms, including Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
As I mentioned above, OpenOffice has equivalent programs to those of Microsoft Office, but they all run from a single application. When you open the app, it will ask you if you want to start writing some text, work on a spreadsheet or create a presentation. Depending on what you choose, the application will launch a specific window. Writer is the equivalent to Microsoft Word, for example.
In functionality, OpenOffice is very similar to Office. Mostly anything that you can do in Office, you can do in OpenOffice. It has a word processor, spreadsheet editors, presentation tools, and even a calculator. In-app features are also pretty standard. There is a spell and grammar checker, support for comments and notes, tables, images, etc. The spreadsheet editor has support for formulas and it also has extensive help.
The best part of running OpenOffice is obviously the savings. It is totally free and it runs quite well. The newer versions have decreased the "cold start" times by 20 or 30%, and once running they are pretty smooth. For the Office users, it will be a bit hard to make the switch, but after a while, you will feel right at home with it.
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