For businesses, Microsoft’s Office suite containing Word, Excel, Outlook and optional extras like Powerpoint, Access or Publisher has become the standard for creating documents and spreadsheets.
This can be expensive as, depending on the way you buy it, it can cost between $200 and $1000 per computer. Sometimes the versions are time limited so they expire after a few years or are locked to one machine.
Open Office is a free alternative to Microsoft Office that has most of the features and none of the cost, it’s a great alternative for the budget conscious office or home user.
There are some problems with other people being able to read your Open Office documents as most people use the Microsoft product. Our sister site IT Queries shows you how to set Open Office to save in Microsoft Word format as well as solve many other IT problems as well.
CNet’s Workers Edge column has further tips on making Open Office even more compatible with Microsoft Word.