Open Office

[Marc P.]

I've used it since early on, when it was offered as a free version of Star Office from Sun Microsystems. The newer versions (1.1 on) are extremely capable, and could easily replace most of the functionality of Microsoft Office. For typing school reports and general documents, I'd easily recommend the free Open Office. Even an OEM copy of MS Office 2003 Basic sells for about $150, and that's just Word, Excel, and Outlook. The full package with Powerpoint and everything else runs over $200. With the price of PC's dropping well below the $400 mark for a decent general internet/email/word processing machine, it doesn't make much sense to spend an extra 38% on software when capable alternatives can be had for the cost of a blank CD.

While it's true some things may be in different places, the general layout is the same. For word processing purposes, it's just as easy to change the font, size, lettering, bullet points, margins, tabs, etc. as it is with MS Office. For the spreadsheets, some of the more advanced functions are in differant locations, but most of it is there somewhere. Same for the Powerpoint alternative. In any case, it's very capable for a free software package, and from what I've seen in using it, can be used as a drop-in replacement for MS Office in most practical purposes.