Free Office software here to stay
If you're like me and don't like paying for office software if you don't need to, today there are so many options available that it's not even funny. Let's not kid ourselves though, Word, Excel, and Powerpoint are still king but the crown is starting to rust (and in my opinion really hasn't improved since Office97).
Setting aside the main downloadable favorite, OpenOffice.org (highly recommended, free) which has programs very similar to the MS ones as well as being able to save in that format, there are up and coming suites of office programs that are purely web based. The big rumor a while back was that Google was going to come out with a MS Office killer (available everywhere you are--perhaps even with personalized settings when you log in), but they ended up just promoting OpenOffice. That doesn't mean they aren't working on it though. Don't be surprised that soon the common thing to do to write a typical paper or create a spreadsheet is to open your browser.
Here's a link to ZDNet.com's interesting list of online favorites.
� Web Office Suite: best of breed products | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com:
Setting aside the main downloadable favorite, OpenOffice.org (highly recommended, free) which has programs very similar to the MS ones as well as being able to save in that format, there are up and coming suites of office programs that are purely web based. The big rumor a while back was that Google was going to come out with a MS Office killer (available everywhere you are--perhaps even with personalized settings when you log in), but they ended up just promoting OpenOffice. That doesn't mean they aren't working on it though. Don't be surprised that soon the common thing to do to write a typical paper or create a spreadsheet is to open your browser.
Here's a link to ZDNet.com's interesting list of online favorites.
� Web Office Suite: best of breed products | Web 2.0 Explorer | ZDNet.com:
