Free stuff you can actually use – Open Office

I love free stuff. I love it even more when it has a use. Free software can be hit or miss, but one of my favorite software packages that is completely free and is a home run every time.

Hopefully, I’m preaching to the converted here. OpenOffice is a free software package that does just about everything you could need from standard office software. The standard download includes applications for: text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawing and databases. The real kicker, besides it being free, it all works. It uses it’s own PDF printer and is every bit as powerful as it’s Microsoft counterpart. It looks like Sun Microsystems has something to do with it now, I’ll have to check into things and see what that is about. I use OpenOffice exclusively on my laptop and it will save into native Microsoft formats. I haven’t had an opportunity to try out it’s compatibility with the latest release of Microsoft Office myself but I have heard good things.

This is a great way to save money for students and their parents, and pull a little money out of the big M’s pocket at the same time. Stories, documents, illustrations and all. There isn’t much reason to pay for office software anymore.

Any other satisfied users out there? I’d love to hear about it. What free software do you use?