Books about OpenOffice.org 1
There are a growing number of books about OpenOffice.org appearing on the the bookshelves. Christian Einfeldt has read four of the best known, and offers his opinions on them:
The books
- Openoffice.Org Resource Kit - Solveig Haughland, Floyd Jones (Prentice Hall PTR - Paperback - 28 February, 2003)
- OOoSwitch: 501 Things You Want to Know About Switching to Openoffice.Org from Microsoft Office - Rob Erbarin, edited by Sam Hiser and Scott Carr (Hentzenwerke Publishing - Paperback - June 2003)
- Taming Openoffice.Org 1.1 - Jean Hollis Weber (Weberwoman's Wrevenge - Paperback - October 2003)
- OpenOffice.Org X for Dummies - Ellen Finkelstein, Mary Leete (John Wiley & Sons Inc - Paperback - 24 December, 2003)
Christian's comments
OOo is really a very sophisticated program. In a sense, a big topic like OOo is best handled if you get the perspective of a couple of different experts, because no one book really can possibly cover it all.
Solveig and Floyd's book is the largest at 976 pages, and that's not including the thorough index. I go here for the nitty gritty. Rob's book is 292 pages, not including helpful apendices and index. Rob uses a narrative style, as compared to more of a cookbook recipe style with Solveig and Floyd's book; I use Rob's book or Jean's book to get an overall feel for what OOo can do, or if for some bonehead reason I can't understand Solveig's explanation.
Jean's book focuses on Writer only, and is the slimmest book at 162 pages, so if you know that you are really only interested in Writer, then her book will completely cover that aspect of OOo.
The Dummies book is probably the most elementary of the four books, and will be good for more basic users who really need to have every little term spelled out for them. I use this book to for ways to explain problems to my parents, since they find this book very manageable, and sometimes I will go over problems with them using this book.
Summary: each of them has a different use, and so you really are not wasting your money if you buy all four!
