With Microsoft Rolling out OGA to treat legitment users like criminals, and Office 12 in beta, what are our choices. I for one will start using alternatives to MS Office after my trial of Office 2007 trial ends in Feb of 07.

Corel Wordperfect

StarOffice

OpenOffice (free version of Sun's StarOffice)

iWork

Edited July 31, 200620 yr by Shindo_Hikaru

OpenOffice (free version of Sun's StarOffice)

Either that or an older version like Office XP or 2000.

there's another office suite called GNOME Office. it's just 3 programs but they are still useful. they load fast and they work like a charm.

but as for me, i'll still be loyal to OpenOffice untill it starts sucking(which will probably never happen).

GNOME Office, have not heard of that since my linux days in college.

office 2003 or openoffice

We have several users in our office that I have moved over to OpenOffice. For users that are not corresponding or trading files with Office users all day it is great. The only down side I have noticed is on the PowerPoint equivalent in OpenOffice that some presentations don't display correctly. Otherwise, The writer and Calc programs work great back and forth with Office users.

For the cost of Office licenses, OpenOffice is a great alternative. It has saved us about $20,000. Other than a few initial complaints everyone has been happy with it.

and soon, ODF (open document format) will be the standard - and even MS office will support basic reading an writing in this format...

it wont be long until i myself will no longer use the *.doc format when sending email be rather just attach the *.odt file with only a mere notice in my email-signature that it contains a file in the Open Office doc format and a link to find info how one can open sutch a file in both Open Office or MS office (installing the plugin).

GNOME Office, have not heard of that since my linux days in college.

the great thing about GNOME Office is that it's cross-platform. the GUI for AbiWord kinda sucks but it works like a charm

the great thing about GNOME Office is that it's cross-platform. the GUI for AbiWord kinda sucks but it works like a charm

Indeed, i have forgotten, i need to loock for it again.

there is also atlantis word processor.

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/

not free, but i like it (despite the fact it does not support tables *grumble*).

I'll be sticking with Office itself. There are too many tools in MS Office that I use that don't work well in other replacement systems. Track Changes for example... I had a 300 page report almost ruined because someone tried to save it using OpenOffice...

Not to mention that Office comes with Outlook... which is pretty much essential for me.

Not to mention that Office comes with Outlook... which is pretty much essential for me.

You mean you don't use Thunderbird?

Not to mention that Office comes with Outlook... which is pretty much essential for me.

You mean you don't use Thunderbird?

Well if he uses exchange server, he probably can't use Thunderbird.

Which brings my semi-on topic question to this thread, if you dump office, is there a (hopefully good), free or low-cost alternative than Outlook for conecting to exchange server email? Including public folders and the like.

Well... Outlook has more to it than TB does. I use the calendar and tasks in Outlook to coordinate my day, and I've also got e-mails from years ago that have attachments that I still might need to forward. Importing the messages into TB doesn't preserve the attachments properly... so all you get is a one or two word e-mail.

Nobody uses Evolution?