LibreOffice is the new free complete office suite

Whether your computer is for home or work, it's inevitable that it will need some kind of office software, even if it's only a word processor. LibreOffice is a complete office suite that includes a formula writer, word processor and vector drawing program, and applications to edit spreadsheets, presentations and databases.

The interface looks a little more polished than Open Office with a cool, blue gradient behind icons rather than the dull grey. Some of the icons have also been redesigned.

Writer is a capable word processor. Along with the basic tools of spelling and grammer checking it can create tables and indexes, and it can interact with spreadsheets or databases for mail merge. This is done a little differently than Microsoft Office as the available data for the merge is shown at the top of the screen. Once you get used to it, it is the equal of the Office method.

We are a little disappointed that there is no real time word count in LibreOffice. It's a very useful tool for anyone who writes to a specific word count, not just writers like us, but students with essays as well.

The spreadsheet software, Calc, and presentation software Impress are just as capable as their Microsoft equivalents Excel and PowerPoint.

Draw can be used to create diagrams and includes some 3D effects for improving how they look. Unlike Open Office it can import SVG images.

Base is the database editor in LibreOffice. Although most people probably won't need to use this program, it is very powerful if you want to access a database and can import information from a wide variety of sources.

The background of LibreOffice is a little complex. Open Office was created by Sun as an open-source office suite. Sun was recently bought by Oracle and many of the Open Office developers have since left and formed The Open Document Foundation. They are hoping that Oracle will donate the trademarks and related content for Open Office so LibreOffice may well change its name back to Open Office. More information on this situation can be found on Wikipedia.