Monday, August 20, 2012

Microsoft Office Alternative, OpenOffice is Free

My laptop is dieing.  The "i" key sticks, so that sometimes when I type fast, it doesn't register and words like "Bikini" look like "Bkin" when I look back at what I've typed.  The battery is now dead, so I can only use it when it is pugged in.  The light that tells me when the bluetooth is on has burndt out.  And since it it 7 years old, it is too slow to run my favorite video game.

With that inmind, I bought a new netbook at Walmart for only $220.  It won't play video games, but it is perfect for surfing the web and writing my books.  The only problem is, it doesn't come with Microsoft Office preloaded.  For $120, I can download them, but that's a good chunk of change.

So I go online, and look for alternatives.  Wordperfect is even more expensive, so I rule that one out. 

Then I find OpenOffice.  It's free, and word compatible. I had heard of OpenOffice before, but had never seen it.  Reading through the description, it's exactly what I need.  It also has the equivalent of powerpoint and excel built into it.  I download it, and fire it up.  I open up my latest book, which I had saved in Word format, and there it is.  I type a bit, hit the save key, and it saves to Word format.

Call me a convert, no more buying overpriced Microsoft software for home use.

You can download it here:  http://www.openoffice.org/

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