A free alternative to MS Office

If you prefer desktop / laptop computer based software (that you install on your own computer) there's a wonderful alternative to MS Office.

It's called OpenOffice.org and may be downloaded free of charge from:http://www.openoffice.org

If you don't want to download the 93MB installation file you may purchase a CD with the software (I believe it's something like $10 per CD, not including shipping costs). A list of vendors is available at the site.

The OpenOffice Suite 2.0 offers:

• Document creation software that allows you to save your file in a variety of formats (including rtf and doc [MS Word]) and allows direct publishing to PDF
• Spreadsheet solution software that similarly allows you to save the file as an Excel file (xls)
• Database management software
• Software to perform Scientific functions and calculations
• A Presentation software that can output files in PowerPoint (ppt) format
• A Drawing package that allows you to create vector based drawings that may be saved in a variety of formats, including SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), which can be read by several other packages

Documents, spreadsheets, databases and presentations created in MS Office can be opened and modified by the appropriate OpenOffice package.

Deepak