LibreOffice 4: A New, Better Open-Source Office Suite

Summary: LibreOffice 4 has just arrived and, at first glance, this popular open-source office suite looks really good.

Some people love Microsoft Office, which just jumped to Office 2013; some like cloud-based office programs such as Google Docs and Office 365; but me, I'm still partial to LibreOffice, the popular open-source office suite. And, at first glance, the latest version, 4.0, looks better than ever.

The Document Foundation, LibreOffice's parent organization, proclaimed that "LibreOffice 4.0 is the first release that reflects the objectives set by the community at the time of the announcement, in September 2010: a cleaner and leaner code base, an improved set of features, better interoperability, and a more diverse and inclusive ecosystem."

While most of LibreOffice 4's changes are under the hood, there are several major changes that make it a worthwhile upgrade to anyone who's already using LibreOffice, or its ancestral parent office suite, OpenOffice or, for that matter, Microsoft Office...