Alternative to MS Office

$20 for the MS Office Suite sounds like an Office 365 subscription There are a bunch of options for that.

jodeb720 wrote:
I use Libre Office. Open Office was purchased by Sun (Oracle) a few years ago and the developers who originally wrote Open Office moved to Libre Office.

I figure that at some point Larry Ellison is going to start charging for Open Office and just make a mess out of it.

Larry sold / donated Open Office to the Apache Software Foundation a while back... However, Apache is kinda weird too

I use Libre Office. Open Office was purchased by Sun (Oracle) a few years ago and the developers who originally wrote Open Office moved to Libre Office.

I figure that at some point Larry Ellison is going to start charging for Open Office and just make a mess out of it.

That being said, They are both good alternatives to MS Office.

You should be aware that both Open and Libre office use a file format called ODF which MS Office sort of recognizes. You can go into the preferences and set Open and Libre office to use the XML (Office 2007-2013 format) for Writer, Spreadsheet and presenter (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).

One advantage to Open Office/Libre office:

They have versions that run on Mac, Windows and Linux. Since I have all three environments, the interface is the same for all three. Much the same as Firefox and Chrome for browsers it makes the transition from Operation system to operating system easier.

As to the 20.00 that someone was referencing for MS office, If you work for a company (Large one) that has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, Microsoft the agreement allows employees of the company to install MS Office on their home machine for Home Use.

Technically it's free, but some states have issues with it being a benefit to the employees and tax the corporations for the "benefit" they are offering their employees. The Great Tax and Fee State of California is one of them. To extend the Home Use program to employees, you link to the Microsoft site and pay them 10.00 (Downloaded version) or 20.00 (You get the DVD) for MS office and somehow that money makes it back to the states coffers.

bob213 wrote:

darsben1 wrote:
I use MS office and now that it is about $20.00 for the whole suite the price is right

Where do you find it for $20.????

Gray market, AKA eBay.

Legal, no, but does Microsoft care?

Folks will take a bundled not for resale version that came free with something else and sell it separately.

Google Docs is good, but not quite as intuitive as MS Office.

CloudDriver wrote:
A happy Libre Office user here.

X2 Very good product.

darsben1 wrote:
I use MS office and now that it is about $20.00 for the whole suite the price is right

Where do you find it for $20.????

I used OpenOffice and switched to LibreOffice maybe 10 years ago. I never used MS Office but have exchanged documents and spread sheets with MS Office users for over 20 years with only a few minor problems.

Open Office years, it does everything MS Office does.

We use OpenOffice for more complex stuff, but I keep Notepad immediately handy for many tasks.
:)
Lynn