Free Office Programs

With the release of Microsoft Office 2007, there has been little attention given to other office applications. On my Primary PC I did shell out the cash for the new office application because it is a well thought out system. For student computers and donated computers I can not afford to pay the price for the upgrade and free applications are powerful and will meet the needs for these computers. Here is a list of applications that are free and do a good job of creating documents.

Openoffice 2.0: Open office is the most well known office system, and is a good full fledged office system. It is easy to learn, and is a very solid system.

Google Docs: Google docs is a online system that allows you to create and work on documents from anywhere with internet access. This system includes both a word processor and a spreadsheet application. There is no PowerPoint like presentation program at this time but I have heard that this will soon change. It provides good functionality and ability to format is good. For a class or school based system the downside is that each user would need an account.

GNOME Office: GNOME Office is another open source office system that is also very solid. It is easy to use and works well. It only has a word processor, and a spreadsheet application. If you are running Linux it also has a database application.

Each of these applications works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux