Online Office Suites and Office Software
The success of Microsoft Office sometimes makes us forget there are many viable and successful alternatives to Microsoft's unbiquitous office application. The following are some of the better known choices available - often free or much cheaper than Microsoft software. The latest online office suites from Adobe and Google are particularly worth a look.
Adobe Acrobat.Com
Acrobat.com is a free, integrated suite of hosted services from Adobe. In fact, Adobe's Acrobat.com is designed from the ground-up for the web and is more of a collaboration suite than a simple online office suite. It offers web-based word processing, conferencing, file sharing, online file storage and PDF conversion. The Adobe Buzzword online word processor is designed for online collaboration and Buzzword currently imports and exports plain text (TXT), rich text format (RTF), Microsoft Word (DOC and DOCX), and Word 2003 XML files. Adobe Buzzword also exports to Adobe PDF and HTML.
The Acrobat.com suite of online services take advantage of PDF, Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR technologies to deliver engaging online experiences that go well beyond traditional office productivity tools. Adobe ConnectNow, the Acrobat.com web conferencing service, provides full-function video and audio conferencing with up to three people, screen sharing, chat, and whiteboard tools. Adobe.com also includes file sharing file sharing tools with up to 5Gb of storage, the Acrobat PDF converter, together with the Adobe Buzzword online word processor and it's online commenting & editing, version control tools.
Adobe 'get it' when it comes to integrated office suites: for years they have marketed the Adobe Creative Suite which has common menus and user interfaces across many applications. The Adobe Acrobat online experience is no different - a great user interface combined with seamless integration across multiple online applications. www.acrobat.com
IBM Lotus Symphony
IBM made IBM Lotus Symphony, an enterprise-grade office software suite, available for free download in September 2007. Lotus Symphony software is used inside some of IBM's most popular collaboration products, such as the recently released Lotus Notes 8. In addition, these tools can be used to seamlessly extend a business process or custom application to create dynamic composite applications. Three core applications make up the Lotus Symphony tools: Lotus Symphony Documents, Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets and Lotus Symphony Presentations. Windows and Linux versions. Lotus Symphony supports multiple file formats including Microsoft Office and Open Document Format (ODF), and also can output content in PDF format.
www.ibm.com/software/lotus/symphony
Tesco Complete Office
The UK retailing giant, Tesco Stores, has introduced a range of very low-cost software for consumers and small business. The Tesco Complete Office suite is very comparable to Microsoft Office 2003, and is sold on Tesco's online store, as well as in their supermarkets. There is a good independent review of Tesco Complete Office, including comparison to alternative low-cost office software suites at www.tescosoftware.net .
Google Office
Read our full review of Google's Online Office Application Suite.
Google Calendar
Run your calendar online, and share with friends and colleagues, or run a calendar for a group for everyone to share and see. Can synchronise with Outlook and other desktop calendar applications.
www.google.com/calendar
Google Pack
Download a collection of free software for your PC, including Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Talk (IM application), Picasa (photo organiser), an anti-spyware utilitity, and Norton Antivirus (including a 6 month subcription to antivirus updates).
http://pack.google.com
Microsoft Office
Lots of resources, downloads, tutorials, demonstrations and information
can be obtained at Microsoft's Office website. See also how Microsoft
Office is being expanded to help people collaborate and to get better
access to other applications and information:
http://office.microsoft.com
Review of alternatives to Microsoft Office in the Financial
Times
Microsoft Office - Free tutorials and "how to" instruction
Microsoft Office has a huge amount of functionality and some of its products
can be a bit overwhelming to the occasional user. This site is one of
Microsoft's best kept secrets. It has a wide range of very helpful guides.
Includes free play on-demand multimedia courses and webcasts.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/training/default.aspx
StarOffice
StarOffice from Sun Microsystems is compatible with Microsoft Office files and is based on OpenOffice. It runs on
Windows, Linux and Sun's Solaris operating system. Package includes wordprocessor,
spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database software as well as graphics,
photo editing and Web publishing components. Usual price is about US$70,
but is sometimes discounted.
wwws.sun.com/software/star/staroffice
OpenOffice
OpenOffice is a free office application suite, based on the same source
code as StarOffice. Sun released the code into the public domain some years ago and OpenOffice is now maintained as an open source community project.
Package includes Writer, a document creation program; Calc, a powerful
spreadsheet; Impress, a multimedia presentation tool; and Draw.
www.openoffice.org
Thunderbird
Not so widely known as Mozilla's Firefox browser, Thunderbird is a very useful full-function email desktop application which easily meets the needs of most people. It is free and an Open Source project. Thunderbird is a fully-featured email application, with security, anti-spam, anti-phishing, RSS, filtering, and as you type spell checking. Thunderbird is a free, and very credible alternative to the mail function of Microsoft Office. If you mainly use any of the online office suites mentioned on this page, Thunderbird would make a great companion.
www.mozilla.com/thunderbird
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