Running OpenOffice from a USB Stick

Did you know that the open source replace­ment for Microsoft Office which is totally free (OpenOf­fice!) can be run from a USB mem­ory stick?  What good does that do for us?  Here we explain the advan­tages which help pro­pel this soft­ware ahead of Microsoft.One of the rea­sons some busi­nesses are ner­vous about using OpenOf­fice is the abil­ity to share files with other non-OpenOffice users.  There are two fea­tures in OpenOf­fice that can remove that concern.

First, OpenOf­fice can save doc­u­ments in native Microsoft for­mats.  This means files can be emailed and shared with­out a problem.

Sec­ond and more inter­est­ingly, OpenOf­fice can run from a USB mem­ory stick.  This means you can bring your data files and the pro­gram to run them with you in your pocket.  Imag­ine being on vaca­tion and pulling out a mem­ory stick at another com­puter and being able to edit or cre­ate documents.

You will not need to learn another soft­ware pack­age, you will be using the same one you are accus­tomed to.  This ver­sion also allows work­ing with pre­sen­ta­tions and other OpenOf­fice documents.

You can read more about the portable OpenOf­fice here.  I have used a portable ver­sion with the oper­at­ing sys­tem U3 that runs mul­ti­ple pro­grams from a USB Flash Drive and had great success.

Beat that Microsoft!