You need this..........and its FREE.........

[ynneb]

You know how we have the perception that FREE is cheap and nasty?
I have been using Open Office for more than a year now. They have just updated to version 3 release.
It does pretty much the exact same things as M$O, but is completely free.
Can I suggest you try it? I'd be surprised if you ever felt a need to use M$O again.
http://www.openoffice.org/
Benny

[Splint]

I agree Ben,

I got into it not long back and I firmly beleive it is every bit as good as Microsoft Office. I'm a convert.

Splint

[irving2008]

Use it on all the home machines (3 Windows laptops, 2 windows desktops, and 2 Ubuntu desktops not including the machine controller ) and recommend it, but at the office we stick with MSO because there is collaborative stuff, integration with other applications and VBA apps in Excel where OpenOffice just can't cut it...

Its horses for courses like many things...

[ynneb]

I'm not sure about the latest M$O versions, but Open Office even exports Documents as PDF files too.
While we are talking good quality freeware, have you guys eve used "The Gimp" Its very similar to Photoshop. http://www.gimp.org/windows/
Its getting to the point that needing to buy or use pirate software, is a thing of the past.

[blackbeard52]

Ihave been in the Tech industry for about 12 years...In that time I have tried to sell systems and or convert people to open source for the bulk of that time....They dont want to learn NEW even cheap.....They just want what every one else is using.... But in the interest of the thread (and I agree these are great products that are free) here is a wide range of free open source...

Accounting- www.gnucash.org
web page production- www.nvudev.com
email data and contacts- www.mozilla.com/thunderbird
browser- www.mozilla.com
check writing- www.exefind.com/checks

[alexccmeister]

I am using Staroffice 8 and its free too. I am downloading this one just to try it. Thanks.

[alexccmeister]

Checked my staroffice and it does export direct to PDF as well. Who needs MSO when you can get free stuff. Yay!

[jsargent]

The new open office is much faster and is every bit as good as office. I use office at work and at home I use open office. I have not problems moving documents between one environment and the other. My wife also does the same. For the last 6 months I have been a convert to open office.

[blackbeard52]

One thing to note to those who would be converting and moving between enviroments, go to the options menu and change the default save to a word document format (.doc) ..just makes it easier and you dont have to keep going to "save as".

[ynneb]

Did I mention that Open Office is the ONLY program that is available for all operating systems, Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, BSD, and Unix. Not even M$O can do that.

[forrey45]

That include vista?
Forrey

[Bubba]

Yep, sure does!

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/s...s_reqs_30.html

lists it under system requirements.