Sometimes I rediscover things. Things (usually FOSS programs) I once wanted to use to get some tasks done and for some reason or another I wasn't so happy with.
This time I rediscovered the OpenOffice suite, which let me tell you it actually rocks. As fan of open-source paradigm, 3-4 years ago I gave it a whirl. I wasn't happy. At all.
But couple of days ago, a colleague of mine told me the Draw component can be used as alternative to 'Microfost' Visio. Hmm, I thought, could these passed 3-4 years be so productive for the OpenOffice suite, did they managed to improve it so much ?! To compare Draw with Visio ?! Let's see ...
There are a small number of things I like at Microsoft which I consider to be useful. One is Active Directory (the concept itself). The other one is Visio. All other is crap, including Exchange and Sharepoint :)
So I thought how could someone say there's a good alternative to Visio ?
Turns out that for non-professionals users of Visio, like myself, OpenOffice Draw IS an alternative. Usually I would use Visio to create some diagrams. Nothing fancy, nothing complex or complicated. Diagrams representing logical components, architecture servers and so on.
Draw can be used to do such things. Give it a try.