KOffice Stabilizes
The KDE Project has announced the release of KOffice 1.1.1, an update to the official KDE office suite. The new release promises better stability, which could help make KOffice the suite of choice for light productivity needs.
This release offers new features and improvements to KWord, KSpread, and KChart; and also adds several security and bug fixes to the entire suite. Finally, the release also offers internationalization of more dialogs.
For those of you who have not already tried the suite, OfB highly recommends looking into whether it meets your needs. The KSpread and KPresenter components have matured into very useful applications, and are worth considering deploying.
Furthermore, the KWord word processor is a good choice for simple word processing tasks, and is also capable of doing light desktop publishing work. The innovative DTP/word processor combination was something that impressed this author.
KOffice interoperates nicely, which is another big plus. In fact, while all of the KOffice applications are standalone, the KOShell merges them together if you prefer working with the different applications in one window.
However the lack of a good set of import/export filters for Microsoft Office, may hinder deployment should such compatiblity be a requirement in your office. OfB recommends that those requiring Office compatibility consider OpenOffice, which you can find at www.openoffice.org.
Summary
Overall: B+Functionality: B User Interface: A Compatiblity: C+ KOffice offers an intuitive, clean interface, and some of the components are very mature. However lack of Microsoft Office-compatible filters may hinder widespread deployment. Free, www.koffice.org. |