OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 is 109MB, and as they continue to build on its features and language support it's only going to get bigger. It's available free by conventional download, or by Bittorrent or eMule p2p.¹ You can also have it shipped to you on CDROM for a modest fee, from a long list of online distributors which you can browse on the site by region.
OpenOffice.org is Java-dependent for certain extras. OOo 2.x is a little more Java-dependent than 1.x. See the Java section of the Wikipedia OOo article for details, including a list of features dependent on Java. This calls for an installed Java Runtime Environment (JRE). If you have Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS X, or a recent Linux distribution you should already have native Java support as part of the operating system. My Java vs. JavaScript page under About HTML has a small demo Java applet you can use to determine whether your PC has an enabled JRE already.
OOo's Java dependence is controversial in some circles because Java and the JRE are not GPL items, which some folks see as compromising the open-source status of OOo.² Sun Microsystems makes the JRE available for free download for various platforms. The OOo 2.x features that need Java are all extras in nature, and OpenOffice.org 2.x is quite functional and usable on a system with no JRE installed. I recommend you install a JRE if you don't already have one. It's also good to have because some people make Web pages with Java applets on them, and occasionally even Java navigation widgets.
If your local public library has free broadband Internet access for cardholders, their PCs are equipped with CD-RW "CD burner" drives, and their policies permit it, you might want to download OpenOffice.org there and burn it onto a CD-R or CD-RW to take home. My local libraries will even hand me a blank disk for a dollar donation. I downloaded OOo 2.1 there in about twenty minutes. Depending on local library policy, you could use a USB flash drive instead of a CD; they've been dropping in price.
Libraries often have a bandwidth pool that's shared by multiple computers or branches. When you try to download something, depending on what else is going on at the moment, you might not always get the data rate you were expecting: like an hour and a half instead of twenty minutes. If something like that happens you might want to just cancel the download, do something else for a few minutes, and try again.
If you're going to download 100MB+ OOo on a dialup/modem connection, obviously a download manager that can resume interrupted downloads is essential: see my download managers page for a good one. I did encounter a server once on an OOo download which didn't seem to support resumed downloads; if that happens, try another server.
The OpenOffice.org installer has been streamlined: the download file for 2.x is an EXE file.¹ After the download you can run that EXE file from wherever it is, or from a CD, without problems. It first creates a folder called "OpenOffice.org 2.0 Installation Files," on the Windows Desktop by default, loads files into it, and then proceeds automatically with the install. After OOo is installed, you can probably delete that install-files folder.
If you're not a computer geek, after you've read the previous paragraph, you'll probably want to skip down to the Configure section.
If you are a fellow geek, in case you ever have problems with OOo, you may want to be able to run OOo's less-drastic Repair utility (Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, OpenOffice.org) instead of just removing OOo and reinstalling it (same place). Most users will probably never have to do either. For Repair you'll need to keep the install-files folder.² Modern PCs generally have gigabytes of spare disk space available for this sort of thing.
If you do want to keep the install-files folder, you may want to have the installer create it at the root of the C drive, in the early step for that, or somewhere else not on the Desktop.³
On Win98, to change the install-files folder location from the Desktop to the root of the C drive, make the following path change, by removing the line-through characters.
| From: To: |
C:\Windows\Desktop\OpenOffice.org 2.0 Installation Files\ C:\OpenOffice.org 2.0 Installation Files\ |
On Win2000 or XP the deleted part will be longer, but the change will be similar and the "To" string the same.
By default OOo loads a Quickstarter tray icon when your system boots, which you can right-click to open the OOo modules when creating new documents. You can also terminate Quickstarter or set it to not load at startup by right-clicking the tray icon. To reset it to load at startup again, open OOo and go to Tools, Options, OpenOffice.org, Memory, bottom section "OpenOffice.org Quickstarter," check box "Load OpenOffice.org during system start-up." A slower system may boot faster if it's not loading the Quickstarter.
You should also find shortcuts for the OOo modules at Start, Programs, OpenOffice.org, which you can copy to your Desktop if you like. Or you can just right-click in any Windows folder and pick New, to make a new blank OpenDocument file, already highlighted for renaming.
I like to make a Desktop shortcut to soffice.exe, which you'll find in the OOo program directory. Running that opens a blank OOo window; then you can do File New and choose a document type. A Send To shortcut to the same file (a shortcut in the folder C:\Windows\SendTo\) also works well for the Windows-shell context menus, which you see when you right-click a file, for use with file types not associated with OOo.
OOo 3.0 claims full support for the Mac OS X native Aqua GUI. OOo 3.0 is in beta as of May 2008, and is slated for release in September. There was an attempt at Aqua support for OOo 2.0 which had to be aborted for various reasons. OOo 2.x on Mac OS X requires either Apple X11 (standard non-Aqua X Windows on Apple Mac OS X) or a Java Runtime. See the Native desktop integration section of the Wikipedia OpenOffice.org article.
For discussion of configuring the document file formats OOo will use, and whether it will warn you when you save a file to a format that's not the default, see the file formats section of my Using OOo page.
If you put OOo 2.x on a CD-R or CD-RW for someone and you have time, you might as well throw in some other relevant free stuff and use up more of the nominal 700MB. I tried to list these more or less in priority order:
For more info on Firefox, SeaMonkey, & Opera, see my Web browsers page; for more on Thunderbird, see POP-mail clients; Web core fonts, browser tips; Gaim, other protocols; Free Download Manager & Flashgot, download managers; Free Agent, newsreaders; CutePDF Writer, misc PC topics; 7-Zip, featured items (computers).
If you want, you can make your README file open automatically when the user loads your CD-R. On the other hand, once you set it up that way, the README file will open every time you load that CD. You probably wouldn't want to have autorun on a CD you were going to carry with you for your own use. Also, the user is going to have to find the install files on the CD and run them manually anyway, so maybe autorun is unnecessary, and just having the README file present on the CD is sufficient.
If you want to make the README open automatically, make a plain text file named AUTORUN.INF to be burned to the root directory of the CD-R, which contains a pair of lines like one of the following three examples.
| For a plain TXT file | [autorun] open=notepad.exe readme.txt |
| For a WordPad RTF file | [autorun] open=write.exe readme.rtf |
| For an HTML Web page file | [autorun] open=explorer.exe readme.html |
This trick should work provided the user's PC is configured so their CD drive's Autorun function ever works at all; if not, they should still be able to find and view your README file manually. Your README file should be at the root of the CD-R also. There's a free Custom CD Menu application you can download, but it's not very user-friendly to configure. For more about making Autorun work, see the "CD-R FAQ" pages linked on my backup media page in this section.
If your README file is HTML format, you can include links to software home pages, but don't try to use hyperlinks to run the install files, that won't work in any reliable manner. Watch your extensions: you can use HTM or HTML as long as the README filename is consistent with the entry in AUTORUN.INF.
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