FREE Office suite

Do you need a comprehensive Office suite for your school, department, home office, or laptop computer? But you don't want to (or cannot) pay a large sum of money to get it?

Then you may want try Open Office, a FREE MS Office-compatible office suite from OpenOffice.org

Components include:

• Writer (word processing)
• Impress (slide show creator/presenter)
• Draw (drawing/graphic editing tool)
• Calc (spreadsheet)
• Base (database)

This open-source software isn't exactly the same as MS Office (of course) but the general functionality and productivity is equivalent. And the files you produce in one Office suite are able to be used in the other Office suite.

[NOTE: The newer XML default file formats used in MS Office 2007 (such as .docx, .pptx, and so on) can be opened in Open Office 3.0 but cannot be saved in those formats.]

OpenOffice.org has just released their latest version Open Office 3.0 . . . so's now is the perfect time to get on board. (or update your previous version of Open Office).

OpenOffice.org has a nice little summary and introduction for teachers and academics at their website that I suggest you explore.

If you try it, or are already using Open Office, then please hit the Comment button below this blog article and let us know about your experience.