Writer, Calc and Impress are clearly taking on their Microsoft rivals head to head, and doing a good job too, but there are other areas in which Open Office doesn't compare so favourablY.Microsoft Office includes Outlook, a tool for managing em ails and appointments, but there's no such program in Open Office. This is a shame, but there are alternatives:

Thunderbird 2 is a great free email program, and an add-on called Lightning adds a calendar to it. Open Office does include a fairly basic drawing program called, Draw. It's limited in features but useful enough, though only if you don't already have a program doing the same job. There's also Base, which is a useful alternative to Microsoft's Access database software that most users won't need to use often, ifat all, and Math, which can be used to create complex mathematical fonnulae.