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Alternative Office Suite Software for Windows

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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=20293http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1571626,00.asphttp://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/productivity/0,39024195,39117219,00.htmhttp://www.gannettonline.com/e/trends/15000604.htmlhttp://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s=1590&a=23870,00.asphttp://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.TXThttp://KB.UltraTech-llc.com/?File=Windows.TXT