Word on the street

During the ten years I worked in School teaching ICT, and now as a student with the OU, one of the questions I have been asked a lot is, "Should I buy Microsoft Office?"

My reply was usually along the lines of, "If you have a friend or colleague who has bought it for their computer; or if the company you work for uses it on their computers; ask if you can borrow it to install on yours. If not - only buy it if you like to throw money away."

Many people automatically assume that because Microsoft Office is expensive, and the market leader, that it must be the best. Well it IS an excellent product... but there are other packages out there that are fully compatible, with all the same features - and best of all they are FREE!!!

My favourite, and the one I recommend here, is Open Office (download here) which features word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation and drawing programmes. All of these will open files saved using other office programmes and also allow you to save them in other formats which are compatible.

Admittedly, the toolbars are quite 'old school' compared to the latest versions of Microsoft's products, using the old style toolbars, but if they do the same job then why pay?