On a Mission

The mission to re-create the environment of my laptop on my new netbook continues. Today I installed the OpenOffice.org Productivity Suite which can do anything MS Office can do and more:

Writer – a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book
Calc – a powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
Impress – the fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
Draw – lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
Base – lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org
Math – lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor

And it's free. Free to download, use, distribute. And open source so programmers can add plug-ins with ease. That last excites Ed but I'm more psyched by the desktop publishing capabilities and the database and spreadsheet.

I confess, I haven't used the program much in the two years since I got WhizFolder Organizer Pro, but it is going to be necessary for prepping final drafts of manuscripts for submission which Whiz is not such a whiz at. And which is one of my main missions for this year. I also have a number of files created in it that I want access to again. For example spreadsheets attempting to organize the family trees, time line and roster for my story world and the project itself and for NaNo 2007 I created a slide show in Impress with pictures of people, clothing, buildings and other items that helped define my characters and settings. I want to do more of those for the rest of the story world.