FREE OFFICE SOFTWARE
For those of you who like the sound of an off-line office suite that's installed on your PC - but who are looking for something closer to the cost-free web-based model than Microsoft's paid-for products - there's good news: open-source office suites are available for download on almost all platforms, and they don't have to cost you a penny.

OpenOffice.org
Perhaps the most famous of them all is OpenOffice.org. Created by Sun Microsystems after it purchased the rights to a closed-source productivity suite called StarOffice, the OpenOffice.org project has created one of the most popular packages around.

For those who can't afford - or prefer not to use - Microsoft's product, OpenOffice is a great choice.

For each application in Microsoft Office, there is an OpenOffice equivalent: for Word, there's Writer; for Excel, there's Calc; for PowerPoint, there's Impress; and for Access there's Base. The suite even includes its own vector drawing application, Draw - and an optional formula editor for mathematical documentation.

As an open-source project, OpenOffice has one major advantage over Microsoft's equivalent: freedom. Users are able to tweak the source code, should they so desire, and the package itself is completely free to download and use - even for businesses.

Minor gripes
There are complaints to be made about OpenOffice, however. The user interface, while functional, lacks the elegance of recent Microsoft Office versions - and can be confusing for newcomers. A spin-off project, dubbed LibreOffice, improves upon this with some new code - but it still lags behind its paid-for equivalent.

For those looking to gain access to a powerful productivity suite without having to shell out a fortune, OpenOffice and LibreOffice come highly recommended - but new users should be warned that there's a learning curve ahead.

BUSINESS
Business users are, mostly, confined to using Microsoft's Office suite. The enterprise-grade editions come with a raft of features that ensure it will remain the pre-eminent business productivity suite for years to come - and, ignoring compatibility, the main reason is simple: Outlook.

Outlook
Microsoft's messaging and calendaring client, Outlook is popular with home users - largely thanks to the introduction of Outlook Express, a free version which shipped with earlier versions of Windows before being replaced with Windows Live Mail. In business, however, it really comes into its own.

When coupled with a Microsoft Exchange server, Outlook allows users to easily share files, folders, calendars, and e-mails - and remains one of the most popular messaging platforms around today.

The flexibility and power of the other Office applications are also popular among business users, with PowerPoint perhaps the most well known - although, given that the package is often associated with the phrase "death by PowerPoint", where users are faced with interminable meetings staring at slideshows created in the product, that's not always a good thing.

Alternatives do exist, however - with IBM's Lotus Symphony gaining ground. Although it only covers word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations - missing the communications and database features of Microsoft Office - it comes at the right price: free. While less popular than open-source equivalents such as LibreOffice, Lotus Symphony is worth investigating if you're looking for something with the support of a major multinational corporation behind it.

Tags: word processing access word productivity google docs excel outlook powerpoint libreoffice openoffice.org microsoft office