I recently bought a new PC, and I didn’t feel like buying yet another copy of Microsoft Office, so I decided to try an alternative.
Sun has released an office suite comparable to Microsoft Office, but it’s free.
It’s called OpenOffice, and it includes programs similar to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access, plus a graphics program.
You can download it here.
Versions are available for Windows, Mac, or Linux. You can order a CD for a small fee if you’d rather not download the software.
I haven’t gone through it feature-by-feature, but it seems pretty comparable to Microsoft’s version. It can even use the same file formats, so you can work with your old Word, Excel, or Powerpoint files easily. One nice thing it has that Word lacks is the ability to save a document in PDF format, so if you go with OpenOffice, you won’t need to get Adobe Acrobat or another PDF creator.
For some reason, Sun left out an email program comparable to Outlook, so I went looking for that piece of the puzzle.
I found two free Outlook clones: Spicebird and Evolution. Both looked good and included features similar to Outlook for email, contacts, calendar, and so on.
Unlike OpenOffice, neither of the email programs works directly with Outlook data files (.pst), but both include an import feature. The catch is that Outlook has to be installed on your computer for the import to work.
I’m not sure what the point of this is, since if you have Outlook, why would you be looking for a clone of it?
One suggested way to get around this is to download a free trial of Outlook from Microsoft’s website and install it to do your import.
I tried that with both Spicebird and Evolution after moving my pst file over from my old computer, and even with Outlook on the new PC, neither program could correctly import my old email.
If you’re starting fresh, either of those would be a good alternative (I would go with Spicebird), but since I need to access my old Outlook data, I’m going to have to stick with Outlook (which I can buy separately once my trial ends in a few months).
If you know of another Outlook clone that can properly handle old Outlook data, please post a comment about it here.
I’ll post more in the future about free alternatives to expensive software.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Charlie Baker // Oct 23, 2008 at 11:02 am
Thanks, Chris! I was getting ready to spend over $300 on Microsoft Office tor the new computer I just bought.
2 Marsha // Oct 23, 2008 at 11:27 am
This is good news. I did not know such software existed that was really free with no catches, no trials or anything else like that.
Thank you for looking out for us.
3 Diane Watkins // Oct 23, 2008 at 2:57 pm
I’ve been looking into this since I am ready to buy a new computer and some without these things are very cheap. Is there any workalike for dreamweaver that you know of?
4 Chris // Oct 23, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Diane, there is a free HTML editor called KompoZer (formerly nvu) from http://www.kompozer.net/ - it probably doesn’t have every feature that Dreamweaver does, but it’s supposed to be pretty good.
5 Albert Grande // Oct 23, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Hey Chris. This is great advice. I have been using Open Office just to try it out and I have been very impressed with all of the features and ease of use.
You are absolutely spot on about being able to save files as pdf. Now anyone can create their own ebooks without any special software. Thanks again for spreading the word about this free product.
Sincerely,
albert grande
PS Please share how the ISS is going. I’m sure it is fantastic.
6 matt // Oct 23, 2008 at 10:58 pm
mozzila has an email program called thunderbird. I use firefox for browsing, and thunderbird for email. go to mozilla.org and you can get them. there are also many very useful add on’s for both, all free.
portable version of the software, also portable firefox and thunderbird versions at portableapps.com
7 matt // Oct 23, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I forgot, i also found a wysiwyg web builder
wysiwygwebbuilder.com. It has a 30 day trial period (puts a built with wysiwyg button on the pages) it is 39.95 to buy, upgrades are free for the versions ie- 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc) but when moving numbers (ver 5 to ver 6) you have to buy the new version, but you get a discount. it has built in paypal support. you can make buy now buttons, subscription buttons etc.
It does have some drawbacks, you can only import html pages, but can export html, php. also has alot of free stuff for registered users.
does not offer an affiliate program.
8 craig // Oct 30, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Great tips chris.
Keep up the good work. Was good to see you in Atlanta at the ISS.
Craig
Leave a Comment