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Technical Help & Discussion => Software, Hardware & Website Recommendations => Topic started by: sam on April 15, 2006, 17:41

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: sam on April 15, 2006, 17:41

Ok you might be happy and think M$ office is good but do you like the attached price? I don't. You probably know I'm a big open source person but I really do like M$ office, not that I would use it to write reports in or anything (I use a typesetting program could LaTex). Anyway, I do like M$ office. I think it is great but it is expensive so how about a cheap (i.e. free alternative and no I don't mean BiTTorrent! :-) ). Here are a few contenders (I am to add to this in time):



AbiWord  - http://www.abisource.com/
              - nice and small, only (currently) 5.1 mb
              - you can get the source code!!!
              - works on the mac, linux and windows!!

OpenOffice - http://www.openoffice.org/
                 - the biggest and best contender to microsft's rein
                 - it is good and powerful, lots of useful M$office like features
                 - smaller than M$office, and free
                 - not as small as ability office.
                 - linux, mac and windows versions

ThinkFree Online - http://online.thinkfree.com/index.jsp
                         - doesn't need installing
                         - online only
                         - odd but only needs net connection and java...

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: GillE on April 15, 2006, 18:46

I've been using Open Office for several months now and prefer it to my antiquated version of MS Office 97.  The maths module can be useful at times.

Gill

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: sam on April 15, 2006, 18:57

btw, did you know that there is a similar maths program within M$ just it isnt normally installed by default (equation edit btw).

What version of open office are you using??

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: GillE on April 15, 2006, 20:15

I didn't know about the maths program within MS Office - how strange that it should be obscured.  I'm using v2.00 of Open Office.

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: sam on April 15, 2006, 20:17

thats a nice version, if you wasnt using that I would have suggested upgrading since there have been some great developments.

You should be able to use equation edit in M$ Office if you insert object... and choose it. It should be installed, but you never know it might not be.

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: chorleydave on April 15, 2006, 22:32

If you are a student or work in education, you can get Sun Star Office free of charge.  I recently downloaded it and have it installed on a spare PC that I use to mess about with.

http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/education.jsp

Title: M$ office alternatives.
Post by: sam on April 15, 2006, 22:50

yep good one there dave, not quite sure how i forgot to put that in my original list,  though it is basically open office these days.