Home Office Tech terms that start with the letter “O" and are often used in the BrightHub Home Office Tech channel, from open source to operating system to Outlook.
Office: Probably the best known of the office suite options, Office by Microsoft is a complete office, project management, and productivity software suite. It includes database functions, spreadsheets, word processing, and ability to create and work with calenders, graphs, charts, and project management functions. Mac Office is the version available for Macintosh users.
Office Suite: An office suite is a set of software programs packaged and distributed as one program, so that users have all the essential functions necessary to perform office work in one item. Typically, office suites contain a word processing program, a spreadsheet program, a database program, and often include templates, desktop publishing options, a clipart collection, multiple fonts, project management programs, calendars, and other productivity tools.
OneNote: OneNote is an office program that joins Microsoft's Office suite to enhance productivity for the Office user. OneNote works like a collection of virtual notebooks, one for each project. It collects and organizes all the files that you use in conjunction with that project, creating a "page" for each section of the project. Users can also create subpages, insert additional information, and share files.
Open (file): Open is a command that executes a line of code in some program on your computer, causing it to retrieve and start a file, whether that file be a text document or a program or a photo. To "open" a file such as a text document means to cause it to be displayed, usually in an editable mode, in your word processing program, though users can also open text documents in other programs (such as web browsers). To open a program, or executable, file, means to run the program.
OpenOffice: OpenOffice is the open source community's contribution to the world of office suites. It was developed, packaged, and distributed by Sun Microsystems, and is available for purchase that includes a manual and tech support. It is also available for free download from the OpenOffice website at no cost. It is easily comparable to Microsoft's Office Suite, and offers the same range of programs and functions.
Open Source: Simply put, open source programs hold to the philosophy that the source code of a program should always be available for the users to alter at will. The open source philosophy has created an entire, active community of open source coders and users who actively develop and release open source programs, usually at no charge, under a GNU license, which means that the program can be used in any application but must remain open source (source code available).
Operating system: An operating system is the basis of interaction between a user and a user's computer. The most well-known operating systems are Windows and Apple, with a third option provided in many variations by the open source community. Open source operating systems include Unix, Linux, Ubuntu, and other variations. The operating system provides a graphical interface, organizes and runs programs, and controls the computer's systems. Without an operating system, a user is limited to typing command lines in a DOS prompt.
Outlook: Microsoft's offering for a computer-based email management program, Outlook includes calendar and to-do list functions.