Suffering a bit of sticker shock at the cost of Microsoft Office?  No worries.  There’s a fully functional, all the bells and whistles alternative out there that you probably don’t know about.

It’s called Open Office. And it is FREE.

It has word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, graphics, database etc. etc. and it’s been around for two decades.  It’s completely modern and, yes, it is free!  And it’s the one thing I can think of that defies the old adage that nothing in life is free.

Sound too good to be true?  It’s not.  The only reason you haven’t heard of it is that it doesn’t have a massive marketing and advertising campaign behind it like Microsoft Office does.  It’s used by many companies, many of our own government agencies, and about a bazillion companies abroad.  They get their money from advertising and sponsors.

You can get it at http://www.openoffice.org/ .

Did I mention it’s free?

Happy computing!