Office Suites/Applications

Most computer users are familiar with the Microsoft Office Suite of applications -- programs such as Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint. If you work in an office or attend a school in the U.S., you almost have to use Microsoft Office.

At home, I found several years ago that I could get by without it. I started using the OpenOffice.org office suite back when I was using Windows XP, and I still use it under Linux.

OpenOffice's key attraction is that it's distributed as free software. It means that I don't have to pay out all that money to Microsoft for word processing or spreadsheet applications.

The OpenOffice apps might not be as good as the Microsoft apps. But, for most of my needs, they don't have to be. As long as I can do the things I need to do, I'm happy, and OpenOffice handles everything that I need to do.

OpenOffice isn't the only alternative out there to Microsoft Office. There are several proprietary suites that you can purchase; and, for Linux users, there are free suites available like GNOME Office and KOffice. Any of these might be good enough for most of the things you'd want to do at home.

In Linux, I find myself using apps from a combination of suites. I use OpenOffice Calc for spreadsheets, but I also use Gnumeric, the GNOME Office spreadsheet app, and sometimes KSpread, the KOffice application. I use OpenOffice Writer for text documents, but frequently use other apps like KWord and AbiWord, and text editors like kwrite, gedit, and kate.

Also, there are free, web-based office suites available, like Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, and Ajax13. One that's not-so-free: gOffice.

Microsoft may also be offering a free, web-based office suite. See this CNET article.

In any case, before you plunk down hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office, you might want to check into some of these alternative suites and see if any of them will work for you.