Free Office Suites are here!

Is Microsoft Office worth the Cost?

With the price of computers in the toilet, and the rise of Open Source software, you have to ask yourself: Can I find a free alternative?

Of course you can! But is it any good?

Most of you are familiar with Microsoft Office, and probably use it at work everyday. But do you need to buy it for home use, such as for the kids' homework, or to hammer out letters to friends and family, or just for a quick home finances spreadsheet? I don't think so!

There are a couple of alternatives that we at Gimme Free Stuff have found. First off, we have the office suite from OpenOffice.org, which is a fully-featured office suite, providing you with a complete word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, like powerpoint, and others. OpenOffice is by far, the most developed of the options out there, and works very much like MS Office. In fact, Gimme Free Stuff uses OpenOffice for all our correspondence, due to it's compatibility with MS Office, and the similarities between the interfaces.

Alternatively, there's a new option. ThinkFree is an online-based, free office suite. The benefits include being able to access your office suite and documents from any browser, and store your files online at ThinkFree, so you don't have to worry about losing your files when you lose your USB key, or your laptop's hard drive crashes. It's all stored on their servers. We've used this package before, and were very impressed.

Either package is suitable for the home, home office, or small office, and both have their benefits and drawbacks. I promise, however, that you will find that either of these packages will probably suit your every office suite needs.

Gimme Free Stuff