Here is how Haugland introduces the guide in her Feb. 21 blog post, where the Web version is published:
What can I write in a finite article about how to use OpenOffice.org? I cant cover everything youll need to know about how to use the program. But what I can do, in a lot less space, is give you what you need to make getting to know OpenOffice.org easier. I can give you settings to apply that will keep you from having problems in the first place. Not all of them, of course, but with a limited amount of information on how to set up the program, I can help you have a smoother, more enjoyable experience with the program. So thats what this is: setting up OpenOffice.org to make it work for you.
SOHO professionals and small businesses are likely to benefit, immediately and directly, from Haugland's guide: It is clear, practical, and designed to help readers steer clear of the most common migration mishaps. Far too many of these companies stick with Microsoft Office out of concern over precisely these types of issues; the sooner their concerns are addressed, the sooner these firms can make a truly informed decision about whether or not to adopt OpenOffice.org.
Things are a bit trickier for larger firms, since Haugland's guide doesn't really deal with the issues a dedicated IT staff might face migrating a significant number of employee systems. Yet her guide is still a useful resource for evaluating OpenOffice as a potential Microsoft replacement; as Haugland steps through the migration process, she naturally brings to light many of the key differences between the two products' feature sets, performance issues, and so on.
One other point in Haugland's blog post deserves a quick mention: Her description of and link to the OpenOffice.org extensions repository. If you are familiar with Firefox extensions, then you'll know immediately what this is all about; while this collection isn't as massive as the Firefox add-on archive, I still think it stands out as a selling point for OpenOffice.org (and, indeed, for community-developed software in general).