What’s a good alternative to Office?

Mainly used for word processing and spreadsheets.

Open office…….

Open Office

http://www.openoffice.org/

For most things, it’s pretty much as good as MS office these days, a little more fiddly to use in things such as choosing from a variety of different formats to save as in Excel, but ultimately it’s a free version of an otherwise expensive product!

I’m convinced 80% of users wouldn’t notice the difference between MS Office and Open Office in use, and of the other 20% that notice, probably 15% or more wouldn’t care…

OpenOffice here too. I like the fact it opens .docx and the like without a blink, amongst other things.

Plus it has the option to export as PDF built in, which is very, very useful.

OpenOffice it works…well

if you have a mac then you should try iWork – has all the functions you need for household use. And does some things very nicely. But it costs (£48-£71 depending on where you buy) whereas OpenOffice is free.

Google Docs

Open Office on most OS, kOffice on Linux (Ubuntu at least).

I use Open Office, which I can’t really justify a grumble about considering it’s cost.

It can be mildly frustrating at times though.

You can get MS Office for 3 PC’s for £89:

http://www.coastalsoftware.co.uk/O2K10HSR.html

Although I have OpenOffice too for the drawing package, as Visio is stupidlypriced.

open office, which drawing package?

I either use open office or google docs depending on the situation

Best “drawing package” I’ve found is Paint.NET – it’s like Paint Shop Pro before it got serious and expensive.

yeah! I still use a demo version of PSP 5

Charlie…. drawing as in vector graphics? Or drawing as in Photoshop stylee?

For vector graphics there is Inkscape.

For photoshop stylee there is GIMP.

Both very good…

And both free.. :o)

Charlie – its just part of OpenOffice 3.2, a less complicated version of Visio (like it was before MS took over).

ok ta. I have 3.2, but only what came down with ubuntu.

Will go fetch it