I received a lovely new laptop last Christmas from my very generous Dad. I love the computer, but much to my disappointment last winter, it only came with a 60 day trial of Microsoft’s Office. After the 60 days ended, I wallowed in my word processor and spreadsheet deprivation for a time. Can you imagine my humiliation when I had to ask business contacts to send their information in the body of an email instead of a standard Word document since I couldn’t do anything with their files?! Might as well stamp “Blogger Loser” across my forehead. I considered buying Office, but the price nearly made me have a heart attack. Really, nearly half the cost of the laptop itself just for the Office suite?
Then my husband made a brilliant suggestion. (No surprise, I suppose, since he is a smart guy!) Ryan told me I should try OpenOffice. Well, I had never heard of such a thing, so I Googled it. But it turned out to be the biggest money saving Google of the year! (For me, at least.) Since I had no idea it existed, I thought I should share it here for those of you who were living under the same rock as me.
OpenOffice.org is a (free!) program that that allows you the many of the same capabilities as Microsoft Office without the cost. You can make presentations, spreadsheets, text documents, drawings, and more, just like in Microsoft Office. And when someone sends you a document from Office, you can transition it seamlessly to OpenOffice. For example, if someone emails you an Excel spreadsheet and you need to edit it, you can just open the file using your OpenOffice program rather than Excel. You’ll then have “access to all functionality and data”. It’s super easy to use too, especially if you are no stranger to Office. You don’t need a CD or product key for OpenOffice either. You can just download straight from the OpenOffice.org site. The next time you need to buy Microsoft Office, I suggest you look into OpenOffice.org instead. It could just save you hundreds.
No, OpenOffice didn’t pay me to write this. It’s just a free product that I adore, so I thought I would pass it along to you!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I wholeheartedly agree, I’ve been using open office at home for about a year now and love it. I can open any office file that other people send me, and best of all I can create new files and send them our in Word or Excel, so that I know others will be able to use them. If your company doesn’t purchase MS Office for you, save your money and go with Open Office.
Thanks for this info Dana! I am curious if this works with Mac too. I will have to look into it. I just bought a Mac laptop and need the MS office software for it. However, I was not about to pay the premium price!
We are Open Office users here too! We love it, and have absolutely no problems using it. We learned about it from reading The Simple Dollar.
The Crafty Dollar´s last blog ..An Oldie But A Goodie
OO indeed is a very handy and AFFORDABLE (imagine it’s free!) tool for people like us who believe in saving every $ for rainy days. GO, OOo!
We haven’t bought proprietary software in YEARS! My husband writes open source software–we don’t even run Windows here, all Linux. Open Office was my best friend all through college.
You should check out GIMP. It’s an open source photo editing program. WAY cheaper than Photoshop…you know, because it’s free.
Sara´s last blog ..Ch-ch-ch-changes
Sara- Thank you so much for the GIMP suggestion. I’ve been thinking how helpful Photoshop would be but wasn’t about to pay so much for it.
I personally tend to favour SSuite Office’s free office suites. Their software also don’t need to run on Java or .NET, like so many open source office suites, so it makes their software very small and efficient.
http://www.ssuitesoft.com
This is excellent info to share, thanks.
Lucy
Heres my Thursday post
http://postpartumillness.com/node/166