OpenOffice

Tired of paying $150-$300 every time Microsoft Office comes out with a new edition, try OpenOffice. OpenOffice is open source, which means it's completely free, version of MS-Office. It has a word process, spread sheet, presentation, database, and publishing software included. Now, I must go on record saying this rarely does open-source give you all the options that major software developers give you, but I've seen it close. Here is how I compare MS-Office and OpenOffice.

Microsoft Office 2003 Products	OpenOffice 2.0 Products	Disadvantages of Switching to OpenOffice	Advantages of Switching to OpenOffice
Word	Writer	Not much, you loose some of the html function (but who makes WebPages with Word) and Clip Art. Besides that it does 90% of what Word can do.	It's free, and has gotten rid of many of the functions that the common user doesn't need. You can save in all the major formats such as .doc files
Excel	Math	Nearly the same functionality	It's free and you can save in all the major formats such as .xls and csv
PowerPoint	Impress	You loose man of the cool transitions and you may have some issues when you try to open a .PPT in PowerPoint. Does 70% of PowerPoint can.	It's free and you can save an open .PPT files.
Publisher	Draw	Not near as good as Publisher and you can't save the files as .pub files.	Gets the job done and it's free.
Access	Base	Haven't evaluated it yet	It's free.

Also you can get OpenOffice for Mac, Linux or Windows. If you are having issues downloading it from the internet contact us.