OpenOffice.org: The limits of readability and grammar extensions

As a professional writer, my software needs are simple. Give me a text editor -- preferrably Bluefish, but vim or OpenOffice.org Writer will do -- and I have all I need.

Introduction

Responding to growing demand for a professional level backup and recovery solution, Zmanda, a leading vendor for open source backup solutions, has introduced an Ubuntu server version of their Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL.

Presentation software isn't complicated compared to a word processor or spreadsheet. It doesn't need to be. Maybe that's why OpenOffice.org's Impress offers a variety of views of your work.

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Stubbornly, OpenOffice.org continues to ship with only a handful of templates. Despite the efforts of several sub-projects and individuals to change the situation, the standard OpenOffice.org download includes only a couple of slide show presentations and a few templates to accompany the wizards available in the file menu. This lack of templates is a serious handicap for many users, and often leaves a poor impression on new users who are accustomed to the selection of templates found in other office suites.

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This month's Harvard Business Review features a case study of a company debating whether to open source its software. Here's a mini review of the article.

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