IBM’s FREE Office Suite

Review by Alan Chang

Although Lotus Symphony is still in beta testing, IBM’s latest release of  Lotus Symphony is a free alternative to MIcrosofft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel that is deserving of your consideration.  Lotus Symphony has more features and a more polished interface than many other free software titles.

IBM Lotus Symphony is a completely free office productivity software suite for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux users.

The Lotus Symphony office suite is still in beta testing, and can be downloaded directly from IBM’s lotus site, at http://symphony.lotus.com. Symphony consists of word processing "Documents", spreadsheet "Spreadsheets", and presentation "Presentations" applications. Lotus Symphony’s Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations are direct alternatives to Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and Powerpoint applications.  Symphony’s software code, however,  is largely based on the free, open-source alternative, OpenOffice.

Compatibility

Lotus Symphony saves your work by default in the Open Document Format (.odt). The DudeRated.com writers are big fans of open-source software. We all rock OpenOffice.org on our laptops. As much as we dig the open-source standards, it is important to note that both Microsoft Office and Apple iWork do not support this open-source format. If you save a file in the default ".odt" file extension, you’ll only be able to open the document with an application that can view this extension.  This means that if you send someone a document saved as an ".odt" they will be unable to view it if they use MS Office or Apple iWorks. 

Luckily, Symphony can read files from Microsoft Office (Microsoft Office Basic 2007 available now for $174) and make PDF files, too. You’d probably be better off to simply save your work in Microsoft’s DOC, PPT, and XLS formats if you want to send it to users who might use Microsoft Office software.

For the most part, Lotus Symphony’s compatibility rocks.  However, Symphony does not have the capability to save work in the new Office 2007 formats. You will also be warned when opening Microsoft Office files that Symphony may not support the formatting, which in my testing of this free office suite alternative, was true when opening complex (lots of tables, and formatting) Word documents. Simple documents such as memos, letters and reports maintained Microsoft’s formatting without any problems.

Symphony can support a tremendous range of document types, much more than Microsoft Office.  Much more than the average user will probably ever need. The one thing that brings down the compatibility rating, however is that it does not yet support Office 2007 file extensions.  Other versions of Office work fine, but for some users in a corporate setting, this may be a problem.

Features

Symphony is based on the OpenOffice.org code base, but has a number of tweaks and enhancements that qualify Symphony as a fork rather than a contribution to the OpenOffice open-source development. 

Symphony is a scaled down version of OpenOffice, with the number of features reduced in order to simplify the user experience and interface design of the product.  Office power users may be turned off by the reduction in features, but for the beginner to intermediate crowd, Symphony fits the bill.

Symphony consists of three individual office applications, which are Word Processing, Spreadsheet, and Presentation alternatives to Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.  Alternatively, OpenOffice.org, which is also free, consists of six individual applications, including database, drawing, and formula apps not included in Symphony. 

The features within Documents include a spelling checker, footnotes, bookmarks, charts, indexes and tables, and more.  Like Documents, Presentations retained most but not all of the attributes of my test Office 2007 PowerPoint file.  Spreadsheets offers a formula bar that supports functions from Excel, but not the same dropdown menu of shortcuts. 

For most users, Symphony offers plenty of features, but power users may want to consider OpenOffice.org.

Speed

IBM’s Lotus Symphony is based on the OpenOffice.org platform, which is known as being a bit sluggish and slow to load.  Symphony is no different.   In fact, the system requirements for Symphony are higher than OpenOffice (512Mb of RAM versus 256Mb, etc.).  At the time of this writing, Symphony did feel slower to load than OpenOffice on my relatively fast laptop.

Keep in mind that Symphony is still in BETA.   The speed and responsiveness may improve by the official release of the software.  At this point, however, I am underwhelmed by the performance.

User Interface

The User Interface is where Lotus Symphony really shines.  The  bluish-gray color scheme and interface is easy on the eyes and simple to use.  I really like the look and feel, and in my opinion feel that it is more attractive than OpenOffice, Google Docs, and the like. The menus, icons and navigation are all intuitve which is a big plus for productivity.

Symphony loses points with me, however, with the default installation.  Annoyingly, Symphony installs three desktop icon shortcuts.  Not a huge deal, but a minor nuisance nontheless.

Overall

The Good: IBM’s Lotus Symphony can support a tremendous range of document types, has features that are sufficient for most of the demands of office suite users, offers a pleasent user interface, and above all is completely free.

The Bad: Symphony is slow to load and will be sluggish on older, less powerful computers.  The features will be inadaquate for power users.  Compatibility with MS Office 2007 is not yet available. 

Lotus Symphony is worth a look, especially if the final release addresses some of it’s current weaknesses.

If you don’t mind spending $175, Microsoft Office Basic 2007  may be a better choice.

Review by Alan Chang

MacBook Air (Starting at $999 at MacMall) is ultrathin, ultraportable, and ultra unlike anything else. But you dont lose inches and pounds overnight. Its the result of rethinking conventions. Of multiple wireless innovations. And of breakthrough design. With MacBook Air, mobile computing suddenly has a new standard.

What’s So Great About the Macbook Air?

Hold your potato-chip grabbin’ hand out in front of your face.  Now, gaze thoughtfully at your digits and marvel at the fact that the MacBook Air is nearly as thin as that greasy index finger you just had up your nose. Yet it has a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display, a full-size keyboard, and a large Multi-Touch trackpad. The Macbook Air is crazy portable — but without the ultraportable screen and keyboard compromises that most of today’s netbooks make.

In a nut-shell, the Macbook Air is what Netbooks should be – powerful, lightweight, long battery life, full-size keyboard, and an AMAZING, no holds barred, LED display.

–> Wanna get this for as low as $999, brand-new with full warranty? Click here.

Slick Features

CPU:

The MacBook Air’s performance is no slouch.   Most ultra-portables today (netbooks, etc.) come equipped with underwhelming Intel Atom processors.  Not this bad-boy.  The Macbook Air’s blistering performance is as impressive as its form, thanks to its 1.6GHz or 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. This chip was custom built to fit within the compact dimensions of MacBook Air. And now it’s faster than ever. The latest Macbook Air models feature a new 1066MHz frontside bus, additional L2 cache (6MB total), and 2GB of faster DDR3 RAM to provide plenty of speed and memory for working with your favorite applications.

That’s nerd-speak for "It’s freakin’ fast."

LED DISPLAY:

The dazzling LED-backlit display provides instant full screen in-your-face, slap upside the head brightness the moment you open MacBook Air. This latest LED technology also makes the display less power hungry than traditional screens, which correlates to long-ass battery life (4.5 hours, so says Apple). And since this display is mercury-free with arsenic-free glass, it’s as easy on the environment as it is on your peepers.

MULTI-TOUCH TRACKPAD:

MacBook Air includes an oversize trackpad with multi-touch technology. Did Apple super-size the trackpad to accomodate the less chic, fast-food nation demographic?  Who cares!  It’s pretty incredible, and way more user friendly than trackpads of yesteryear.  You can pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image. This gesture-based input so successful on iPhone and iPod touch now comes to MacBook Air.

BIG FAT HARD DRIVE & SOLID STATE OPTION:

The latest MacBook Air hard drive is now bigger and meaner at 120GB. So there’s plenty of storage for work, play, and whatever happens in between (like picking up babes on Match.com?). Or choose a 128GB solid-state drive, which has no moving parts, for enhanced durability, longer battery life, and less heat on your junk.

SO, WHAT’S IT MISSIN’?

Dude, there is no flippin’ built-in DVD drive.  And for that, I gotta knock it down to a four out of five rating.

Coolness Factor

Let’s be honest guys, you’re researching the Macbook Air right now because the thing is plain ol’ silly-cool, and not because it’s chock full of the latest whirly gizmos and tera-blips (whirly gizmos and ter-blips copyright Alan Chang 2009 ).  Face it, when you slide this thing out of your attache case, and place it on your table at your favorite local coffee shop, you’re going to get looks.  Lots of looks – many from the gentler of the sexes.  The ladies LOVE the Macbook Air.  It’s undeniable that it is the sexiest computer on the market today.  If there was ever a time in human history that owning a computer could help a guy get some tail, it is now, with the Macbook Air.

Value

The Macbook Air ain’t cheap, my friends.  The basic no-frills version starts at $1800 plus tax and shipping on Apple’s website.  The better-equipped version costs a whopping $2500.  It’s pricey, but it looks the part.  Everyone (think ladies, here) knows it costs a small fortune.  I think there is some sort of mathmatic formula here though, dudes… it’s something like this:

VALUE = [price of thing / probability of getting laid] x [number of new partners]

At $1800 – $2500 I’d say that this thing still represents a pretty decent value.  But, right now over at MacMall, you can get your grubby paws on these for as low as $999.  How?  Shush, don’t question the awesomeness.

Overall

This thing is pretty awesome.  The one drawback that stands out is the lack of a built-in DVD drive.  This kind of matters if you like installing software, watching movies, archiving your data, etc.  There are work-arounds, of course, as well as an external drive capability, so overall, it’s a 4.5 out of 5.