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April 2007 Microsoft Office can be an expensive option for home users, what are
the alternatives?
For many people, Wordpad is way too limited. It doesn't have features like
tables, page numbering or headers and only allows you to save in a few formats.
More importantly, it isn't a spreadsheet or presentation program.
The most popular free office suites are Open
Office. Open Office has a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package.
Open Office has been criticised for being more memory hungry than MS Office.
Another free alternative is Google Apps.
These run using your web browser. There are limits on the size of the documents
and spreadsheets you create. You need to pay for some of the more advanced features
and bigger storage limits.
We're not fans of Works. We find it's too limited and it's inability to read,
or export to, Office programs is a nuisance. We'd only recommend using Works
if it has been included with a new system.
The downside with OEM products is they increasing tied to the hardware you
buy. If upgrade your computer, an OEM package may not run on it. So you end
up buying a new package with every system.
Over the last ten years, Microsoft Office has become the defacto standard
for office applications. While that may change in the future with online services
Google Apps and open source software like Open Office, it's difficult to avoid
using an MS product in one way or another. We'll look at other alternatives
in future articles.
Free Software
The cheapest software is free. Microsoft Windows comes with a builtin word processor
called Wordpad. This is very basic, but is adequate for very straightforward typing.
Microsoft explain the features at their Wordpad
how-to page.
Microsoft Works
A thinned down alternative to Microsoft Office is MS
Works. This is bundled with a lot of brand name consumer computers. It offers
word processor, spreadsheet, database and calendar.
Office converters
If you don't use Microsoft Office, you will sometimes
encounter documents or spreadsheets you can't read. To overcome this, Microsoft
have free tools that allow you to read and print Office files, but not print them.
You can download these tools from the Microsoft
Office online web page. Just search for "viewer".
OEM Microsoft Office
Original Equipment Manufacturer software is discount software provided by the
supplier. Microsoft and other companies offer these at cheap rates on the condition
they are sold only with new hardware. There is usually no difference with the
full price product and the savings are substantial.
Student and Home editions
Microsoft offer a student and home edition that can be installed on up to three
home computers. Older versions required a student or teacher to be in the household
but that's been dropped with the latest version. Home businesses should note that
this version is not licenced for commercial use: Businesses have to buy the full
version.
Business users
One of the successes of Microsoft Office is that it is pretty well the standard
for business use. If you aren't using Office, you will probably encounter irritating
and sometimes costly problems. If you are prepared to deal with these problems,
then we'd recommend Open Office for business use.
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