It is hard to do better than free. OpenOffice.org offers a free office productivity suite that will meet the needs of at least 90% of computer users, and they do it for FREE! Download your free copy!

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Aaron T. You are right, this program met my needs and I don't need that overpriced crappy MS office. I think you just saved me some money. Cheers to Marion!!!

4/29/10  •  Votes (0)

Dawn P. Awesome! just what I needed. Thanks :)

6/16/10  •  Votes (0)

Heather S. I need to be able to use microsoft word docx files, I hope they can do that and if so then this will save me some $$. Thanks Marion

6/24/10  •  Votes (0)

Marion S. As long as the DOCX isn't too complex OpenOffice should open the file just fine. Also, Microsoft Office now supports the OpenOffice default format (Open Document Format ODF) so people with Office 2007 or 2010 will be able to open files that you forget to save as DOC. You can also change the default format so if you want to always work in DOCX you can default to that format.

6/25/10  •  Votes (0)

Alexis P. Finally, something I can use in place of microsoft office. $300 for something that's going to be updated in a year or two?! No thank you. I just wish it had a synonym feature like MS does. Oh well! Don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

8/6/10  •  Votes (1)

First let me start by saying I love anything free. Open office website overs you the ability to download their program and use it for free. The best part is that the software they offer is comparable to Microsoft Office. The program offers a word processor similar to word, a program like Excel, and a comparable power point software as well as some others.

The best part of all is you can save any open office project as the comparable office program. This is great if you have Microsoft office at work but not home. You can open a office file from home with the program work from it and save it as an office file. Great feature if you don't want to spend the money for Microsoft office.

I highly recommend you save some money and use this great program. The website will allow you to download it. Give it a try.

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Heather S. I just downloaded tis today and wanted to bump up this review so others see it too!! Great freebie :)

7/22/10  •  Votes (0)

Jesse G. How have you liked the software to this point?

1/30/11  •  Votes (0)

This is great for mac users. The mac does not come with microsoft word. You can download this program for free on their website. You can save documents in microsoft compatible format. You can also open microsoft documents.

Open source always gets my attention, and this is one of the best of them.

It's basically a completely FREE alternative to Microsoft Office. It does every single thing that Microsoft Office does, except it's free! Now, the best part....is that it will open and save to Microsoft Office formats, but you have to deliberately choose this.

Let's say someone sends you a .doc document, and you need to edit it. Just make sure you save it as .doc, (the default is odt) and then they will be able to open your altered document.

This is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, so everyone can use it!

I have used Open Office through 5 versions now, both for word processing and for spreadsheets. It has become better with each version and in virtually all instances is a complete substitute for Microsoft Word (and the related spreadsheet, etc etc software - OO is a full suite too). It is free to download, and I have run it under both Windows XP and under Linus OpenSuse with equal success. Unfortunately some people running older versions of Word can't open the standard Open Office ODF file if you send it in that format. There are two answers to that. One is that OO will always save a file in DOC format if you select that - end of problem. The second is that there are several download options for plug-ins which enable Word to read the file. An unexpected bonus of OO is that its ability to open files ranges across so many formats it can open files which Microsoft products don't open. Format and compatibility problems from OO 3.2 onwards are now rare. The main criticism of OO has been that it is a large download file and needs a general code "clean-up" to get it to run faster. OO 3.3 addresses that to some extent and there is more to come. Finally part of the OO team left to develop Libre Office, which is intended to be an enhanced, free, version of OO but with improvements. If you are running a standalone system this is vastly better than spending real money on Microsoft Word.

Excellent, reliable..have used it for years. Only the ignorant pay $$$$ for big-name products!

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T N. so there's no difference between openoffice and having the microsoft package, for example? there aren't compatibility issues? i'm guessing some people pay for the brand name products for some good reason?

1/16/11  •  Votes (1)

T N. so there's no difference between openoffice and having the microsoft package, for example? there aren't compatibility issues? i'm guessing some people pay for the brand name products for some good reason?

1/16/11  •  Votes (0)

J S. I am so sorry for any offense caused. I define ignorance only as lacking knowledge. I respect the right of each consumer to choose and wish only that interested parties have access to relevant information.

1/16/11  •  Votes (0)

T N. j.s. - i didn't mean to say that you offended me... sorry, i only am curious about what big or small differences there might be.

1/17/11  •  Votes (1)

Andrey L. At of this point, they are all compatible with each other.

7/19/11  •  Votes (0)

mike h. The Open Office products are included gratis with the Linux downloads. I have been using Open Office since I was running a Sun Sparcstation back in the 90's. Open Office is mostly compatible. I have had some issues editing Open Office files in Microsoft Word. Otherwise, I don't see a lot of difference. I still use OpenOffice word and spreadsheets. Since I switched to Ubuntu Linux these are my main text and spreadsheet programs. They do what I need, and are provided for free.
The latest versions of Ubuntu (11.04) has a new format which is the Open Office sucessor. I tried it and went back to version 10.04 LTS.

7/19/11  •  Votes (0)

This site is absolutely amazing! When I purchased my new macbook, I really didn't want to spend the money to purchase Microsoft Office for Mac. My dad has a friend at work that told him about this program and it is absolutely amazing! It is totally free, you can use Microsoft word, excel, and powerpoint and it is totally compatible with other computers. I have to do a lot of file sharing for online classes (I am a college student) and it works perfectly. Don't waste the money on Microsoft Word, openoffice.org is the exact same program at the perfect price... free!!

OMG. I had the most annoying experience with Open Office. I would give it one star if it costed anything. First off just from the look of it, it look very outdated, compare the newest one OpenOffice to Word 2010 and you'll know what I mean. I strongly recommend getting Microsoft Word 2010 or 2007 at least instead of OpenOffice. I know Word is around 100 dollars but I used OpenOffice and I bought Word b/c I disliked it so much. Microsoft = User FRIENDLY. OpenOffice = User ATTACKER