There are other tools for this, but Print2PDF allows both production on your Windows PC and on-line. You can batch produce PDF files, you can include nearly all the useful little options (like bookmarks, digital certificates, watermarks, etc.) and it does it all like if it was a special printer in Windows, allowing all programs to use it.

Thanks to Bruce Byfield of Linux Journal, it is now possible to have a relatively fair comparison of the heavy-weight champion of office suites (Microsoft Office or MS-Office) and the young hyper-active challenger (OpenOffice).

Obviously, OpenOffice advantage is that it is cheaper than Microsoft Office: It’s free.

But what are the other ways to compare both? Bruce goes to great lengths (3 pages) to try and give us a balanced comparison around the overall interface, the MS-Word/OpenOffice Writer word processors, MS-Excel/OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet applications, PowerPoint/OpenOffice Impress presentation tools.

Interestingly, and I believe that this is a credit OpenOffice, the differences are really small and the price (free) of OpenOffice will be heavy in the decision.

OpenOffice.org vs. Microsoft Office

By the way, did I mention that I am a strong advocate of OpenOffice? I have been using it both for personal and professional activities, for 10 years now; And it it keeps improving a very good base into an excellent tool (including the full compatibility with Microsoft files).

New features:

• Faster start-up times
• Compatibility with MS-Office 2007 documents
• Better Compatibility with MS-Office 97, 2000, XP documents, encrypted with a password
• Importation of dynamic tables from Excel
• Comments are now possible in the Impress presentations
• Improvements to the Calc cells handling (cell merging, sorting, etc.)

For Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux.

• “Impress: Using Master Slides” explains how to use master slides in order to make a presentation look better and more homogeneous.
• “Mail merge in OpenOffice.org” : Doing mail merge from a desktop software suite like OpenOffice.org is not often easy on the first time. So, why not be guided by an expert?

The new features are quite noticeable:

• Support of MS-Office 2007 format for documents
• OOo 3.0 is now compatible with Mac OS X
• New multi-page mode in Writer
• Several users can now simultaneously edit and share a single spreadsheet
• Capacity to use MS Access databases from Writer

To freely download your MS-Word 2007, your MS-Excel 2007, you just have to run to the OpenOffice.org web site. This is free, this is legal!

How could we ignore the launch of Chrome, the new browser from Google? Every is babbling about it, everybody tried it (it can be downloaded here).

But after one test run, I believe that I should explain something. Yes, this is a marvellous browser because it takes most of the good things from FireFox, Opera or Safari (all IE competition). I immediately noticed:

• No space is lost in useless graphical waste, everything is concentrating on user display,
• The good tab management,
• The impressive performance,
• The name-completion in the address bar.

Some will also have noticed the more technical features like:

• The separation of applications running in different tabs,
• The very small footprint (including for the Javascript).

But, all this is hiding a very critical reality: Google did not even try to make a mere browser (it even lacks a simple RSS feed manager). They are more interested in doing more than Internet Explorer competiton. Much more.

The impressive advantage of this browser is elsewhere: it will fight against Microsoft applications allowing to work online in the best possible conditions. Chrome is nearly an Operating System competing with Windows. Yes, because where Windows offered a vehicle to sell Microsoft Office, Chrome will allow Google to develop a wider range of online tools in the path opened by the Desktop applications and GMail.

It will hurt Microsoft real bad. Chrome is obviously the best browser to support this approach. Rock solide, fast (very), reliable and able to support application crashes.

Microsoft Office 2007 Templates

Free legal download.

• Five important security apps for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
• Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software
• The Windows Apps You Never Need To Install
• Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls; We have to admit that there is no longer any good reason to pay for your computer security under Windows.
• Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications
• Logiciels gratuits from TutoWeb.
• Now, to look into the future, Sneak peek at OpenOffice.org 3.0
• And, last but not least, for old dinosaurs, let’s remind you that you can still use VAX-VMS on your Linux PC. If you don’t know what I am saying, either you’re too young, or you never received a hacker education. Or both.

But there’s more:

• iphone@pdfonline.com to convert from Microsoft Word or Visio to PDF file
• doc@koolwire.com to convert from PDF to Word or RTF file
• mp3@koolwire.com to convert from WAV to MP3 format
• wav@koolwire.com to convert from MP3 to WAV format

Solution (partial because you still need to do something): Crunch all documents through a software to make them readable. This is basically the offer from Docx2RTF, Windows utility that you can download freely.

Up to now, you had the possibility to use Open Office (which just went to version 2.3). This free desktop suite is compatible with Microsoft file formats (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and gives you the ability to do nearly everything that PowerPoint does. And -we have to admit that- we do not use a lot from PowerPoint (bullet lists and titles).

But Google joins the race with the arrival of Google Presentations, which their online answer and free again (and more legal than any botleg copy downloaded from BitTorrent, DirectConnect or similar P2P network). There was already a Google Docs application suite; It is now complete.

Have fun with your free download of… PowerPoint competition products.

Steal Office!

MS-Office is still out of reach for normal people around $400 (for this price you can consider buying a computer). But Microsoft hides behind this slogan a proposal just for students starting September 20th: $60 for MS-Office, it’s a steal.

Not sure this is really a steal, I keep recommending to download OpenOffice for free…

However, you can download the excellent Neo Office for OS/X (a Mac OS/X port of OpenOffice). It’s now available.

• Portable Office Software
• Portable Email/Calendar/ToDo Programs
• Portable Text and Voice Messengers
• Portable Media Tools (Audio / Video)
• Portable Graphics Viewers and Image Editors
• Portable Browsers and Web Tools (FTP, Feedreaders, Torrent clients…)
• Portable Security Software
• Portable Games
• Other Portable Utilities
• Portable Developer Tools (Techies Only)
• All-In-One Packages
• Portable Operating Systems (â€HowTo†Articles)
• USB ThumDrive Tips

In software, if this was not reason enough to think seriously about it, we should also think about the impact of printing onto black & white printers (they are color-blind too and this affect 100% of B&W printer users). Most of the problems could be alleviated by following some simple rules that should be part of any software requirements.

My proposal:

• Color coding is usable provided that you type in the color name inside the colored cell. For example compare the following and what would happen if the colors were missing:
  •     
        
        
  • Green
    Red
    Blue
• Think color in shades of grey: Light pink, light yellow and light green will probably be similar; Prefer red, light yellow and dark green (normal, light and dark will print better).
• Use redundant information to complement color information. For example, in colored graphs, lines may be mixing color-coding and dotted-line-coding and other visual cues not relying on color.
  • Difficult to print and read:
    
    
  • Better:
    
    
• When you test the application (or better when you validate the specification), you should always have a test with a screen used in black & white or shades-of-grey mode. Things that you may not easily notice will quickly pop to your eyes (like in the examples above).

If you start incorporating these in your requirements, your software will be better, your communication will be more efficient (remember that most color-blind people either do not know it or do not tell about it).

And I have seen many people improve significantly this at the individual level just by looking at their own PowerPoint charts or Excel graphs to improve them in a matter of seconds. Why not try it now?

Aqua-native, includes both PPC and Intel binaries, allows Spotlight to index both content and metadata of OpenOffice and OpenDocument files.

Importantly, NeoOffice v2.1 arrives on March 27th, and it will immediately include support for Microsoft Office 2007 document formats.

Some of the most sensitive improvements were expected by the users:

• Calc should improve notably the management of dynamic pivot tables from Excel origin Excel (a powerful tool that is too often under-appreciated or ignored).
• PDF files: More control possibilities/options, including the ability to generate in-PDF bookmarks.
• Adaptation to Vista for a better compatibility.
• Appearance of SQL requests inside requests for the database manager.
• Stability improvements on the Mac version (along with size reduction).
• Better compatibility with Slackware, NetBSD, Linux 64, Linux SPARC.

For a download (still free, of course), go and check on the OpenOffice web site.