OpenOffice

Faced with spending a few hundred bucks on a new version of Microsoft Office this morning and dragging my behind down to my local Fry's Electronics computer store, I decided to try something different - OpenOffice for Windows.

If you never heard of OpenOffice, lend me your ear. Imagine getting an entire office productivity suite including graphics, database, presentation, word processing and spreadsheets all for free.

Then, imagine being able to run OpenOffice not only on your Windows desktop, but also on Linux, Solaris, OS/2 and Mac OS too. There is no other office suite in the world that is multi platform capable than OpenOffice. Not only that but its backed by a world leader in computing - Sun Microsystems.

I don't have the space to write a full review of OpenOffice as it would take an army to sit down and look at every application and feature. Having used Microsoft Office for nearly two decades, I can say that after playing around with OpenOffice for a few hours, it is very easy to use and close to its competitor.

If you are looking for a Microsoft Office replacement and don't want to spend the money, try OpenOffice first and then make a decision if you want to upgrade your version of Microsoft Office.

I think you will be extremely surprised at how good it is.