IBM recently announced that Lotus, a primary part of IBM's Software Group, is releasing (for free) an OpenOffice based productivity suite called Symphony. For those in the know, this is a rebirth of a long-since departed Lotus brand. For those out of the know (present company included) this is a polished, well-mannered, and generally simpler OpenOffice. It's polished because, well, anything is polished by comparison to OpenOffice (before I get flamed, let me contend that OO has improved monumentally in the last five years!). It's well-mannered because by night it masquerades as Superman (or possibly just because IBM engineers like to produce quality products). It's simpler because it lacks some of the features that OpenOffice users may expect it to have. That could be a good thing, especially for that someone in your life who routinely uses about 1% of the features in Microsoft Word.
So why use Symphony? Here's my list of good reasons:
1) It's free
2) It's simpler than Office. How many of us need all those features anyway!
3) Tabbed windows in one window frame. I mean documents, spreadsheets, and presentations all cohabiting on the same window. Neat!
4) Did I mention it's free?
Download Symphony here
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