Let’s face it, everybody uses office software and some of us depend on it everyday. It’s no wonder Microsoft has such a hefty price tag on it’s popular office software
and to be fair it is indeed worth every penny. However, there are other, free alternatives to Microsoft Office that you should definitely consider.
Microsoft Office
If you’ve ever needed to create a word document, powerpoint presentation or a spreadsheet then you will know all about Microsoft Office. The latest version of this software is Microsoft Office 2010, despite the fact we are at the end of 2012. If your familiar with this particular office program then you know it works brilliantly and of course you might be reluctant to try any other alternatives, but here’s why you should reconsider.
Open Office
Open Office is an open sourced office suite owned by Oracle. If you don’t know what open source means the source code of the project is freely available for developers to use and improve on. I absolutely love open source projects as it really shows what we can do as a community.
Oracle’s Open Office very quickly became the first real alternative to Microsoft Office and the moment I heard about it I went straight over to the website to try it out. I could not have been happier, everything you would expect was featured. There are some minor differences for instance cropping an image directly within the text editor can be annoying but it’s easy enough to work around. I am currently using Open Office as my alternative to Microsoft Office and find it a joy to work with.
Libre Office
I have only just recently discovered Libre Office and it turns out that the developers working on Open Office decided that Apache was taking the project in the wrong direction and migrated to a new version based on the source code for Open Office called LibreOffice. They are both inevitably similar but it is believed Libre Office is now the best free alternative to Microsoft Office with far more promise of updates in the future.
Personally I have not switched from Open Office yet simply because it does everything I need at the moment. If you are just jumping on the open source bandwagon then I highly recommend you choose Libre Office.
So There You Have It…
2 very good free alternatives to Microsoft Office that will instantly save you a shiny penny. I must also add that both open source office suite’s mentioned here are very lightweight, relatively small downloads and rarely run into speed issues. They can also open a variety of different file types including Microsoft office extensions. Lastly, both PC and MAC users can benefit with support for both systems. Please note that their are other alternatives to Microsoft Office that have not been mentioned here as I personally felt they were not worth considering in comparison to the free alternatives outlined in this post.
If you want to download either of these versions I have direct links below which will of course be added to the resource page.
For the latest OpenOffice click here (or Mac users click here)
Or for the latest LibreOffice click here (or Mac users click here)
Hope you enjoyed today’s post, and more importantly I hope you can utilize these great alternatives to Microsoft Office and inevitably saving money at the same time.
I never heard of LibreOffice, thanks for the tip!
You’re very welcome Josie!
Wow I can’t believe I didn’t know about this. All this time