OpenOffice is a very useful free application bundle from the OpenOffice foundation (which is supported by Sun Microsystems). Among its advantages are that it handles most Microsoft Office files and it exists for Linux and Mac OS X machines as well as for Windows. I keep a copy on my laptop so that I can use material I have prepared with Office 2000 when away from home. (Note that if MS had more reasonable licensing for individuals, I would not need to do this).

The book is divided into five sections, one for each of Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations) and Draw (simple graphics tool) and a final short section some other features of OpenOffice.

I think this book would make a good companion for anyone who has decided that they want to break their reliance on MS Office as well as those who want to use a office application suite that is largely independent of their choice of platform. It does not go into excessive detail and probably does not cover enough for those who are expert users of office applications (certainly I require more detail before I could use OpenOffice as more than a secondary suite).