What is OpenOffice?
OpenOffice is a good office suite (available as a free download at www.openoffice.org) that can do most of what is offered in Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice equivalent components to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Access are OpenOffice Writer, Impress, Calc and Base. (OpenOffice does not have an Outlook equivalent).

Microsoft Office and OpenOffice Differences
Newer features of Microsoft Office, particularly, multimedia-related features, spiffier templates, presentation transitions, document themes, and the like are the sorts of things OpenOffice lacks, but most people don't use those or will not miss them. 

One Microsoft Office feature missing in OpenOffice that some instructors will miss is the ability for creating narrated presentations; that is, lecture presentations synchronized with voice narration, which add significant value over lecture presentations without voice.

On the other hand, OpenOffice HTML Export produces nice HTML, Web accessible HTML, built-in.  For Microsoft Office, one needs to install the Illinois Web Accessibility Wizard for Microsoft Office, a free Microsoft Office add-on available to the UIC community at the university Web store - http://webstore.illinois.edu.

Also, since smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm devices do not have (today) built-in support for viewing OpenOffice document file formats, it is recommended to save OpenOffice documents in Microsoft Office file formats so they can be opened on smartphones.

The biggest difference, of course, is that OpenOffice is free, whereas Microsoft office costs money. 

Campus units can purchase Microsoft Office from the Urbana General Stores, under the Microsoft Select program.  Microsoft Office 2007 Standard Edition (Outlook, Word, Excel & PowerPoint) costs $45, whereas Microsoft Office 2007 Professional (MS-Office 2007 Standard Edition plus Access and Publisher) costs $55.  Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is also $45.  Microsoft OneNote is $9.99.

Trying out OpenOffice
In general, most people who voluntarily want to play with or start using OpenOffice will do fine with it, especially, if they have access to Microsoft Office in case they run into compatibility or functionality issues.

Lynda.com, available to everyone at UIC, has several three-hour long self-service online tutorials on each of the OpenOffice components; for Lynda.com on-campus and off-campus access links for anyone at UIC, visit:  www.accc.uic.edu/training.html.