Kerkia

Office Suite

Background

MS-Office is most definitely a standard in this domain, but it is not free. An office suite like Microsoft’s typically includes a word processor, a spreadsheet application, a presentation program, a relational database management system and a vector graphics editor.

Recommendation

The one obvious office suite of choice is OpenOffice.org. It includes, in the order of the images below:

Writer: word processor
Calc spreadsheet application
Impress: presentation program
Base: database management system
Draw: vector graphics editor

It supports all major formats including of course the Microsoft Office formats and is a perfect solution for many users including small to large companies.

Note: OpenOffice in also available from different providers and with different names and slight differences. Sun Microsystems provides an almost identical StarOffice, IBM provides an identical Symphony, and there's also OxygenOffice with a lot of extras that are arguably not that useful.

Another alternative is SoftMaker Office 2008. This under-publicised office suite is actually very complete, working very similarly to Microsoft Office and with a better compatibility level with those formats, if compared to OpenOffice.org. The new 2010 version is not free, but the 2008 version is free and very capable; some actually consider this product superior to OpenOffice.org given its slightly nicer user interface. If you’re looking for a simpler option and don’t mind a low frequency of software updates, then this might be for you.