OpenOffice, A Free Word Alternative

This week’s tutorial will introduce you to the freeware program OpenOffice. This program, available at OpenOffice.org, is a potential replacement for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice has all of the capabilities of Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint, but at a reduced price, it’s free. This makes it a great alternative for law offices who need the functionality of Microsoft Office, but can’t afford to purchase licenses for each machine; this is especially true for solo practitioners and home lawyers.

You can click on the link and watch the video streamed or you can download the video here ( Just right click and choose “Save-As”). The video explains how easy it is to OpenOffice and the similarities to Microsoft Word and Wordperfect. It’s an 20.6 MB file, so should take ~2.5 minutes to download via DSL.

Some of you may notice the audio quality in this tutorial is much better than previous tutorials. This is because TechnoEsq has invested in a Snowball Blue condenser microphone. It’s a great microphone for the price, but the ultimate test is whether you all can hear a difference in the quality of the broadcast. So send me your opinions and if the response is as I think it will be, I will go back and re-record the audio for all previous tutorials.

http://PoppeLawFirm.com Hans

Finis, I’ll comment on both Snowball and OpenOffice.
First, Snowball. It sounds great. The only think I noticed is that is seems to skip every once in a while. I don’t know if that is the microphone or if that is where you edited and spliced the recording. Other than that, it’s great. How much can we expect to pay for something like this?

Second, OpenOffice seems like a viable alternative to word and I’ll likely try it with my next laptop; however, what’s in it for the developer? Why would they give it away for free?

Hans Poppe
http://www.technoesq.com Finis Price

Hans,
The skipping is probably because I got a little overzealous with the editing. I wanted clean audio for this recording and so I think I may have spliced a bit too much. The Snowball was $99.00 and has omnidirectional and unidirectional settings. So it’s perfect for blogging as well as capturing conversations around a table.

As for OpenOffice, it’s an application which is created by the contribution of many many programmers. Their reward is the ability to use an application no one of them alone could have built. Of course, if you like their program, they accpet donations
http://www.KentuckyLawBlog.com Michael Stevens

The sound quality of the “Snowball” was absolutely outstanding.

With that quality and that price, legal podcasting [as opposed to illegal podcasting ] is not far down the road in Kentucky.

Thanks for great tips and insights.

Mike
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