May '03 Tools

Do you really need to spend hundreds of dollars for a suite of office productivity programs?

Alternatives to Microsoft Office...

Currently the world of office productivity software is dominated by Office Suites from Microsoft, which offers far more than most of us will ever have any use for. What if you could get the benefits of the programs in the Microsoft Office Suite for $75 or even $50? Better yet - how about free? You may not have known it, but you can!
If you're on a tight budget, or just don't see the need to spend big bucks for software, there are some surprisingly good alternatives that offer Microsoft Office compatibility without the high price tag. Another big plus is that if you have multiple computers, this allows you to legally install your office productivity software on all of them.
These affordable alternatives also offer you the advantage of being able to download them online whenever it's convenient for you.
Let's explore a some of the alternatives...

StarOffice...

Sun's StarOffice includes an impressive number of applications, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing module, database, scheduler, and email manager. StarOffice's most notable feature is its StarOffice Desktop, a virtual work environment that fills your entire screen. The idea behind the Desktop is to let you organize your work, browse files, and launch your office programs using a single interface. Whether you like it will probably depend on how accustomed you are to your current desktop environment. You can read a comparison of StarOffice vs Microsoft Office by viewing http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0/compare/so6_comparativebrief.pdf StarOffice's 76MB-plus download size and all-in-one desktop environment might cause some users to hesitate, but the collection of programs is powerful and offers strong compatibility with Microsoft Office.
Visit http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0/index.html to download the program.
Purchase price is $75.95.

gobeProductive...

gobeProductive is an inexpensive, easy-to-use all-in-one program that lets you fly through all your tasks with a set of powerful, intuitive tools, on a single, elegantly simple desktop. gobeProductive integrates full-featured word processing, page design, spreadsheets, charts, illustration, photo retouching, even slide-show presentations with special-effect transitions. Writing a report? Drop in a spreadsheet, a photo, a graph or a flowchart. No need to figure out ahead of time which application to use. Unlike “suites” that lock you into a single application or make you switch back and forth, gobeProductive lets you work the way you think—all in one very smart space. Because gobeProductive is ONE easy-to-use program you don’t have go in and out of (or learn how to use) different programs. Each tool works in all parts of the one program and works the same way in each of those parts. gobeProductive reads documents from other major programs like Word and Excel. And it can write your documents back out into those formats so your work can be used by others. You can even save documents as PDF files that everyone can read, or post them right to the Internet, all in one easy-to-use program.
Visit http://www.gobe.com/ to download the program.
Purchase price is $49.95

ThinkFree Office...

This collection is an affordable suite of word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation graphics applications. Its powerful, yet easy-to-use applications can seamlessly open, edit, and save directly to the corresponding Microsoft Office file formats like .doc, .xls, and .ppt. ThinkFree Write, Calc and Show allows users to effortlessly exchange files with friends and co-workers using Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Its unique, pure Java architecture enables it to run on Windows or Macintosh operating systems. ThinkFree Office features integrated, Internet-based file sharing and storage with end-to-end security.
Visit http://www.thinkfree.com to download the program.
Purchase price is $49.95

602Pro PC Suite...

602Pro PC Suite by Software602 includes a word processor (with a good spell checker), spreadsheet program, photo editing program, photo album, and extensive help documents included in the download. 602Pro is an MS Office clone that even features a few additional amenities, such as the ability to preview items as you explore. You no longer have to guess a word-processing document's contents by its name -- 602Pro lets you preview the first few sentences of a document. Because each program is compatible with its MS Office counterpart, you don't have to worry about not being able to open documents. There are a few components the free 602Pro PC Suite does NOT have - a presentation program (like PowerPoint - Sun's OpenOffice includes one), a thesaurus for the word processing program, text-to-speech capabilities, free tech support. If you want any of these additional features, you can get them by upgrading to the Plus version. If size is a concern, at 16.2MB, the 602Pro download is quite a bit smaller than Sun's 76MB StarOffice
Visit http://www.software602.com/products/pcs/ to download the program. Purchase price is FREE!!! Upgrade to Plus version is $29.95

OpenOffice...

Even as reasonably priced as it is, why pay for StarOffice when the FREE open source equivalent known as OpenOffice (backed Sun) is available for download? OpenOffice.org 1.1 is the latest beta of the free, open-source, MS Office-compatible suite that began life as the above mentioned StarOffice which is now sold by Sun. The suite covers pretty much everything you need with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, equation editor and a drawing program. It opens most major formats such as MS Office, saves to PDF, has comprehensive help, and spellchecking in 15 languages.
Visit http://www.openoffice.org/ to download the program.
Purchase price is FREE!!!

GNOME Office...

The GNOME Office suite is based around a set of core technologies which contribute to provide the user with a rich, mature desktop environment in which they can work productively. Their mission is to coordinate productivity applications for the GNOME Desktop and produce a productivity suite composed of entirely free software. The GNOME office suite is not defined by a fixed number of applications. By permitting multiple applications in several categories, users can select the application most suited to their needs.
Visit http://www.gnome.org/gnome-office/index.shtml to download the program components
Purchase price is FREE!!!