OpenOffice - The Free Alternative to Microsoft Office

The new version of Microsoft Office — Microsoft Office 2007 — has been on the market for a few months now.

Some people grabbed it quickly because they always want the latest and greatest version of their software. Others bought it because it's the current Office version and they needed Office — and they didn't know any better.

In this case, "better" is OpenOffice, the free open-source office suite that can read and write Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Powerpoint files.

Not only does OpenOffice have its own versions of those programs (Writer, Calc and Impress), it also includes Base, its database program; Math, its mathematical formula display tool; and Draw, its drawing program.

There were some conversion problems in the early (version 1.x) OpenOffice Writer program where things like documents weren't lined up the same way in Writer that they were in Word. In particular, I noticed that bulleted lists in Writer v1.1 were not indented the same in v1.1 as in Office 2003. Version 1.2 solved that. I could save a file in Writer and then open it in Word (or vice versa) and it looked the same.

Of course, now, it's up to version 3.0.1.

If you haven't tried out OpenOffice, download it and give it a try. You can probably save money by using it instead of Microsoft Office 2007. After all, OpenOffice is free.

Read more at why.OpenOffice.org