A few days ago, I saw the leaked screenshots from Windows 7. Microsoft Paint and Wordpad now “feature” the ribbon bar, just as Office ‘07 does. It finally occurred to me: Microsoft isn’t stupid. It’s not like they didn’t recognize that the switch to the ribbon in Office ‘07 (with no alternative interface) would drive users to OpenOffice.

The OpenOffice.org team has been experimenting with a new user interface for the suite of programs, and they've presented the first rough prototype of this new interface, more specifically for Impress. The general gist? It's Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon interface.

The developers of the beloved OpenOffice.org office suite are giving serious development time to the despised and reviled ribbon interface of Microsoft Office 2007. I was, well, shocked to say the least.

Two weeks ago Project Renaissance unveiled its first prototype. The prototype resembled the Ribbon interface first introduced in Microsoft Office 2007, and the denunciations came so fast that few bothered to check the facts, or to give the idea any serious consideration.

OpenOffice.org is the greatest open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite. Over the years OpenOffice has evolved to become much more than just an alternative to MS Office however. Let’s look at some hacks that will allow you to become more of a power user of OpenOffice, enabling you to be more productive with the software.

Mozilla has announced that it plans to bring Office 2007's Ribbon interface to Firefox, as it looks to tidy up the cluttered browser.

OpenOffice.org 2.4.0 is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft's Office application suite. It is fantastic if you need basic office applications — such as a word processor or spreadsheet — at no cost. However, large organisations and power users may be disappointed by its lack of features and support.

OpenOffice.org, while often criticised for its slightly antiquated interface, is arguably the most popular free software and open source office suite and in many cases, a good alternative to Microsoft's ubiquitous software system.

Recently, a report (PDF) on a number of students opinions on OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Office 2007 Word and OpenOffice .org Impress vs. Microsoft Office 2007 Powerpoint, whose conclusion is down-right depressing to those of us, who would prefer to see open source software introduced into education.