Even with a student discount, buying the Microsoft Office Suite can still leave a hefty hole in your wallet. It’s most likely the most polished and professional-looking of the options available, but if you just want to write the paper without gazing too long in admiration at the Ribbon layout, take a look at these free alternatives which are already very usable and only improve with time.
I recognize there are some significant differences between the below mentioned five productivity software suites, but I don’t believe those should make much difference to the casual student user. Any of these feature-rich five would capably suffice to replace at least the three main programs in Microsoft Office (not including Onenote, in which case Evernote, Simplenote, Keynote NF, etc—I will cover these in another article—can mostly fill the gap)
- OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) , Go-oo (http://go-oo.org/) , Libreoffice
(http://www.libreoffice.org/)
- word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.
- KOffice (http://www.koffice.org/)
- word processing, spreadsheets, presentations
· Lotus Symphony (http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.nsf/home)
- word processing, spreadsheets, presentations
The below mentioned are free and web-based, meaning that they are likely simpler in functions than the software suites, have limited storage, and can be accessed from any computer with internet.
- Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/)
- http://www.officelive.com/en-us/drawings, forms
- collaboration apps, business apps, productivity apps (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, planner, notebook, calendar, etc)
- Office Live Web Apps (http://www.officelive.com/en-us/)
- word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, notebook
- word processing, spreadsheets, presentations
Did I leave out any important productivity suite/service? Please let me know in the comments!
Have you ever considered SSuite Office as a free office suite solution?
Their software also doesn’t need to run on Java or .NET, like MS Office and so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small, efficient, and easy to use.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com
Oooh, I’ll take a look. Thanks!
NIce
I have bookmarked your post
Thanks for sharing these valuable links to get free software.
These links are very helpful for me, i got software which i was searching.
It’s understandable that cash can make people independent. But how to act when someone has no cash? The one way only is to try to get the credit loans or just secured loan.