Free Office Software

For those looking for a real alternative to Microsoft Office as a wordprocessor/spreadsheet/presentation/database application, the newly released OpenOffice 3.0 is a fantastic product. And it's FREE!

The user interface is far neater and cleaner than Office (in my opinion), it's a genuine all-in-one application so moving data and content between functions is just neater and it's now available for Windows and Mac operating systems.

If you're hesitant about switching, try the two in parallel for a while and see which you prefer. OpenOffice can import and save Office documents so you won't have any issues with other people opening documents that you have created.

If you want to be picky, there is no integrated email and web-browser but Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox are equally free and equally as good (better in some ways).

Go ahead and give it a go. It's free, so what do you have to lose? If you feel guilty about downloading free software, you can always make a donation to keep the development going...