ALthough being the standard, there is nothing saying there are no alternatives to Microsoft Office. Quite the contrary, there is a very popular (and FREE!) alternative in the form of Open Office.
Released as version 3 today, Open Office supplies many of the features of Microsoft’s products, with some features of its own. We really do recommend that all students try it out before they contemplate spending £100 or more on Office 2007 Home and Student.
For those of you who would like proof of this, keep tuned for a comparison review between Open Office 3, and Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student.
Open Office 3 is available for download here. (Site is limited atm due to huge popularity)
One Comment
I’ve been using Open Office for about 2 years now, it is as good as or maybe even better than Microsoft office. Many peoples criticisms with Open Office is that it saves in a different file format, but this is false, as you can save and open documents in both .ODT and .DOC (In OO Writer) as well as the other file formats that Microsoft Office uses.
Another great thing about Open Office is that it can be used on all major operating systems, so you can transfer files between each operating system without the trouble of one of them not understanding the file type.
As I said, in some cases Open Office is better than Microsoft Office. Tasks such as Mail Merge are far easier to do in Open Office, I haven’t used Microsoft Office in 2 years, but at that time they had no ability to create Mail Merge documents.
So yeah, try it out, it’s free!