office

If you haven't used it, OpenOffice.org is a great product. For me, it has completely replaced MS Office, and is more familiar than MS Office 2007. What makes the product so great is the value/cost ratio. Using OO.o, I can view, edit , and save Excel and Word files, as well as many other formats. But the cost? $0. Free. Zip. Nada.

How is this possible? How is the software free without pirating it? Well, OO.o is released under a license that allows for you, the end user, to have the source code for the software to modify as you please.

There will be some naysayers that throw up the "support" argument: who do you call when you need support for an open source software? My answer? Google. When I used MS products I called MS once, and to escalate my call was no less than $200. I subsequently Googled my question, and found the answer after a little digging. The same thing goes with OO.o (or any open source software, for that matter).

If you really want to make a phone call, you can use a product called StarOffice, which is supported by Sun Microsystems. The product is under $100, I believe, and has the ability to do all OO.o can do and more.

So, in summation, there is no reason to use MS Office if you just need Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. There are better alternatives out there, with much better prices and support.