Free Office!

A couple of people have approached me this semester with similar problems: they have nice, shiny new computers, but not the right software to do anything with (no Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc.). My advice to them was to simply try to carve some time out where they could use the computers here at school.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me at the time, but there is a free alternative that's out there that is pretty good: OpenOffice.org 2.2. I used it for a while before I got Office 2007.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of Office 2007, but if Office 2003 is your only alternative (here at Draughons, it is) OpenOffice is a really good program to use instead -- and you can't beat the price. Plus, it will save in all of your favorite Office 2003 formats, like .doc and .xls. Nice.

One really cool thing about this particular program is that it's "open source", meaning that developers all over the world collectively work on the program. Got some programming skills? Sign up to work on the program. How cool is that?