If you have never heard of OpenOffice, you might want to read on…
For those of you that have ever had to buy Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, I don’t have to tell you how expensive Microsoft Office is. If you are a student or teacher, you get off “easy” at $150… but depending on what version of Office you need, and if you even qualify to upgrade - you could easily be looking at $500 or more! If you have to pay for licensing many computers, it can really cut into your budget! Not to mention, doing it all over again in a few years is expensive and you risk your data not being accessible if they decide to change their proprietary file formats again.
There are plenty of horror stories such as students having issues saving in Office 2007 format while their professor has Office 2003, and their homework assignments can't be read and get marked late!
What if I told you that there is a really good, and free alternative? I use it in my business and install it on all my computers, and it doesn’t cost a thing. Not only is it free (as in price) it is also free (as in freedom). This means no longer will you be locked into a particular vendor’s proprietary software. OpenOffice.org supports the ISO certified OpenDocument format. It should be no surprise that many schools, governments, individuals, and businesses are adopting OpenOffice.org so their data will be safe for years to come!
Download Openoffice.org right now - a free office suite that can replace Microsoft Office!
(works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris)
I embrace open source and open standards as I feel the needs of the community and individual are served better. With open source, anyone is free to contribute to the development or make necessary changes.
For a worldwide list of independent consultants that provide support services for OpenOffice.org, check out the Consultants Directory at the Business Development Project of OpenOffice.org.
Here is more of the best open source software around
I personally have used many of the following titles. If you know of something that you feel should make the list, tell me!Open Source
7-Zip
- Supports ZIP,RAR and many other compression formats. the 7z format is hard to
beat! Makes for a great alternative to Winzip! (Windows)
Ant
Movie Catalog - program made to manage your collection of movies DVD, CD, and tapes. (Windows)
Audacity
- Cross-platform sound
editor (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Celestia
- Space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three
dimensions (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Firefox
- Award winning
cross-platform open source web browser (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Filezilla
- fast and reliable FTP
client and server (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Pidgin (formerly Gaim)
- instant messenger able to
handle multiple protocols such as AIM, Bonjour, Jabber, IRC, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo! (Windows, Linux)
HTTrack
Website Copier - make a backup of your website!
(Windows, Mac, Linux)
Inkscape
- Inkscape is a Vector Graphics Editor, similar to Adobe Illustrator
(Windows, Mac, Linux)
KeePass
- open-source password
keeper (Windows Mac, Linux, PocketPC, & PalmOS)
NVU
- HTML editor with similarities to Dreamweaver and Frontpage
(Windows, Mac, Linux)
PDFCreator
- creates PDFs as easily as printing to a printer (Windows)
Stellarium
- Planetarium simulator for your computer that shows you a realistic 3D
sky of any time and place on Earth! (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Thunderbird
- cross-platform email and Usenet client with a great junk mail filter built in - can replace Outlook Express.(Windows, Mac, Linux)
UltraVNC
- allows
you to use your mouse and keyboard to control another PC on the network (Windows)
VLC Media Player
- a multimedia player for many audio and video formats - great alternative to Windows Media Player. (Windows, Mac, Linux)
PortableApps - Put many of the above apps on your Thumb drive and it's like carrying a laptop on your keychain!Portable applications have to be the coolest thing since sliced bread! You may already know about these "thumb drive" or "USB Stick" things that let you carry vast amounts of data everywhere you go... but imagine not only carrying your data, but your applications too - well, you can! This site has just about every program you could want put on a small USB drive that allows you to run the entire program whereever you go! (Windows)