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closeIf Benjamin Franklin had penned his famous aphorism about death and taxes today, he might have been tempted to include Microsoft Office on his short list of life’s unpleasant inevitabilities. Might have, if not for the numerous alternatives to the ubiquitous office software suite available nowadays.
Yes, contrary to popular misconception, there are alternatives to Office. And while it’s true that they don’t always match Office’s exhaustive — and sometimes exhausting — feature list, they also don’t match Office’s hefty price tag. So next time you’re shopping around for office productivity software and looking to save a few bucks (and assuming your work doesn’t rely on some of Office’s more esoteric features) you might want to investigate these options.
If you require better PDF functionality than Office offers, (and nowadays, who doesn’t?) check out Corel’s WordPerfect Office MX3 ($299.99, http://www.corel.com). Its suite of applications includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, Presentations, and WordPerfect Mail, all of which duplicate most of Office’s functionality and also boast the ability to read and edit PDFs, a task that typically sends Office running home crying.
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Got a mountain of data that needs to be organized and tracked? Check out Sun Microsystems StarOffice 8 ($69.95, http://www.sun.com/staroffice/). It includes Access-like database software, Base, along with Writer, Calc, Draw and others.
The above options are available only for Windows or Linux, but that doesn’t lock Mac users out of the office party.
Two excellent alternatives exist for OS X. Apple’s own productivity suite, iWork ($79.99, http://www.apple.com/iwork/) leverages OS X’s core technologies to produce eye-catching results. (Ever been wowed by those flashy presentations Steve Jobs gives? He does those on iWork’s Powerpoint-killer, Keynote.) Also for the Mac is NeoOffice (free, http://www.neooffice.org), a Mac-friendly port of OpenOffice.org, eliminating the need for installing extra Unix software like X11.
If you’re looking for true cross-platform office software, one of the most popular Office alternatives around is OpenOffice.org. Thanks to the enthusiasm of open source developers everywhere, OpenOffice.org is one of the most feature-rich, secure and widely used alternatives to Office, although it’s not always the easiest to install. Best of all, it’s free. (And no, that’s not a typo. The “.org” is part of the software’s name.)
The Web 2.0 phenomenon has yielded a couple of online alternatives worth looking into. ThinkFree Office 3 (http://www.thinkfree.com) offers both an online version as well as Java-based desktop software for $49.95. Also online are Google Docs and Spreadsheets (http://docs.google.com) an online alternative that has been gaining a lot of momentum in the last year. Both offerings are still in beta as of this writing but are mature enough to warrant a closer look.
One caveat: The ability for these alternatives to open and save Microsoft’s document formats is generally good but rarely perfect. Demo versions are available for most software. It’s a good idea to test document compatibility before investing your time or money in an alternative (and a bad idea to test it by not being able to view that mail merge template your customer just sent you for urgent review.)
Compatibility problems notwithstanding, if you find an Office alternative that works for your needs, you might find yourself thinking about that other famous Benjamin Franklin aphorism — the one about a penny saved.
Rick Anderson is an Information Systems Technician for The Bellingham Herald who previously worked for six years as The Herald’s Web developer. He writes both fiction and computer code in his spare time, is an avid amateur photographer and an unapologetic Unix geek.
Matt McDonald is the Online Project Manager and Mac Technician for The Bellingham Herald. He graduated from Western Washington University in 2004 with a journalism major and computer science minor. He enjoys surfing the Web and real surfing on the Washington coast.
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