OpenOffice & Star Office

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Everyone knows that clever marketing has meant that, just as with the Windows operating system and Internet Explorer, Microsoft with it's Office suite has an overwhelming monopoly in the word processor/spreadsheet/presentation software sector. I fondly remember, for instance, using WordPerfect, a much better program than MS Word in my opinion, but alas no longer available in it's full incarnation.

Well, there are alternatives which are almost equal in capability to MS Office but are free. OpenOffice and it's Sun equivalent, StarOffice, are both available for no charge (StarOffice via GooglePack) and include wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database, and programs for preparing presenations and drawing. OpenOffice in particular, being an open source program, is continuously being updated by its users, and there is an active discussion forum if you have any problems. Importantly, both OpenOffice and StarOffice documents are compatible with MS Office, so transferring documents to-and-fro should not present any major problems. Worth a try if you want to save a few hundred £'s (or $'s or €'s or any currency)!

Available from http://download.openoffice.org/index.html and http://pack.google.com/intl/en/pack_installer.html?ciNum=13&hl=en