Microsoft Office - $60 for students! (... and free alternatives for non-students.)

If you are a student enrolled at an academic institution, and you have an email address ending in .edu, you can get Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 for $59.95. That includes 10 full-version applications. The offer is good until April 2008.

Of course, if you're not a student you'll have to fork over hundreds of dollars for the same product. But there are other options besides Microsoft.

ThinkFree Office advertises itself as the "free online alternative to Microsoft Office." Includes word processing, spread sheets and presentations. As I noted in a previous post, working online is often slower than using a program installed on your computer.

OpenOffice is another free suite of applications. It's the open-source version of Star Office. It resides on your computer, but the instructions are not that user-friendly for non-techies. Still, if you've used a word processor before, you will probably know what to do with OpenOffice. Anyway, it's free, so you have nothing to lose by trying it.


Pauline
teachmeinternet.com