[mkradcliff]

I've been using a trial version of Microsoft Office and was really bummed that the trial period is ending soon. I really like Office but I'm not willing to pay $140.00 for the cheapest version, so I bought the latest copy of MS Works instead. Works is a great program, I've used it for years, but it doesn't have a lot of the really cool features that Office has. So, I did a search on cheap alternatives to Office and found something as cheap as they come, free!


This program is Open Office, and it can be downloaded at openoffice.org for free. I wish I had found this product before I purchased MS Works because it offers so much more. In my opinion it compares more to MS Office. While I can't guarantee that it has every feature that MS Office has because I don't have a lot of experience with MS Office, I will say that it appears to.


A few of the features that I was interested in do not have as many options with Open Office as with MS Office. However I believe that Open Office has taken a lot of features from MS Office and made some major improvements. Even though I like MS Office more than MS Works I found the program to be down right contrary at times, doing more of what it wanted to do other than what I was trying to get it to do; and often becoming unresponsive and shutting down.


I've been using Open Office for over a week now, and I have had absolutely no problems. Open Office's layout is very similar to MS Office and MS Works, so if you have any experience with either one of these programs you should be able to jump right into Open Office. However, Open Office comes with very detailed instructions and tips in case you do run into a problem.


It only took a few minutes to download with DSL; time well spent. If you don't have DSL and don't want to download with dial-up, you can have someone else with DSL download it for you. Open Office allows you to make copies of the program for other people.


Open Office is definitely worth a try if you are in need of an office program. You can always remove it if find it doesn't meet your needs.


Melissa -