Free Office Software

Ever since my tower computer has been off getting repaired I have been without Microsoft Office. You don’t realise until you don’t have something how much you use it!

So I didn’t have any choice but to try out some of the free office software you can download off the internet, as a replacement to Microsoft office on my laptop. I have given quite a few completely free office packages a go and I have been very surprised they are actually great!

Freeware, Shareware and Open Source, what’s the difference?

If you think there is no such thing as a free lunch then you can think again, free stuff online comes in various different formats.

Freeware - Software that is available free of charge for personal use.

Shareware - Computer software developed for the public domain, which can be used or copied without infringing copyright. Programmers typically get paid a small one time fee from users who find the software useful.

Open Source – Many developers love to make useful software so open source software is a response to this. It’s called open source because the source code (the programme) is available to anyone that wants to download it and edit the code to improve the software. The advantages of using open source are that people are constantly working on the software improving it and it doesn’t cost anything!

Free office software I have used and liked.

OpenOffice – is a great fully functional downloadable office suite with programmes equivalent to Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Paint and Access

Google Documents and Spreadsheets - a free to use online word processor and spreadsheet editor. The great thing about this is that it works online so you don’t need to download any software, so you can use it on any computer which is great if you are at an internet café. You can also save all your work online so there is no chance of you losing your work.

PDF Creator - A free PFD convector to convert word documents to PFD’s

I have only used the 3 listed above but they will more than do the work you will have done on Microsoft Office.

If you fancy looking for more free software a good starting place is Download.com, this is one of the biggest global free software sites. You can download virtually any type of software for free from it, but it is worth watching what you download since anyone can upload software to the site I’m not sure what the screening programme is for malicious software, it is worth checking out the ratings on the site and the number of times the software has been downloaded.