Alternative Office Suite Software for Windows
Last Updated: 30 May 2005
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*** PLEASE NOTE: Link(s), If Provided, May Be Wrapped ***
Microsoft Office is by far the most dominant Office Suite
for the Windows platform (and pretty dominant on the Mac
as well). Although extremely feature-rich, it is very
bulky and expensive, making it less than appealing for
home users -- particularly those with multiple systems.
As a result, a number of alternative Office Suites have
been gaining in popularity in recent months/years, and
they provide nice, fast apps which feature compatibilty
with Microsoft Office formats. Here are some of the main
contenders:
FREE OFFICE SUITES
• 602 PC Suite ........... http://www.software602.com/
• EasyOffice Freeware .... http://www.e-press.com/demo_downloads.html
• OpenOffice ............. http://www.openoffice.org/
............. http://theopencd.sunsite.dk/
LOW-COST OFFICE SUITES
• 602 PC Suite Plus ...... http://www.software602.com/
• Ability Office 2002 .... http://www.ability.com/
• Corel Office ........... http://www.corel.com/
• EasyOffice ............. http://www.e-press.com/easy_office_premium.html
• gobeProductive ......... http://www.gobe.com/products/productive/gobeproductive.html
• Star Office ............ http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/6.0/
SUBSCRIPTION BASED OFFICE SUITES
• ThinkFree .............. http://www.thinkfree.com/
REVIEWS
• http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20293
• http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1571626,00.asp
• http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,39024195,39117219,00.htm
• http://www.gannettonline.com/e/trends/15000604.html
• http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1590&a=23870,00.asp
• http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,71526,00.asp
PERSONAL NOTES
• May 2005: OpenOffice and 602 PC Suite are updated more
regularly than the other products.
• My favorite in this bunch is gobeProductive. Reminds
me of the Office Suite that used to be availabe with
GeoWorks... (Needs an email client)
• Other than CorelOffice, most of these Office Suites
do NOT come with an email client, which is a shame.
Email is the most compelling app for home users, and
until someone makes a credible email client (with
support for calendaring, etc) and ties it to an
Office Suite, MSOFFICE will continue to be dominant.
• Many of the alternate Office Suites are adequate for
basic document creation or manipulation. In particular,
OpenOffice is very compatible with MSOffice files.
• All of these products have problems addressing the
more complex functionality available in MSOffice, such
as Macro development.
• I'm not too fond of Corel Office, and I find Star
Office too slow and clunky... (even v6). OpenOffice,
however, is much better.
• There are a number of cool Office Suites for Linux
such as those offered by KDE and Gnome
RELATED TOPICS (ALSO IN THIS ARCHIVE)
• http://KB.UltraTech-llc.com/?File=AltOS.TXT
• http://KB.UltraTech-llc.com/?File=Windows.TXT