The best things in life are FREE!

When we bought our computer, it came with Microsoft Works, not the lovely and ubiquitous Office. How much does it cost to upgrade to Office, or even Word? A lot. Do you want to teach your kids how to make spreadsheets or presentations? I'm in charge of a directory for my homeschool group. How do you think that goes without Microsoft Access? Not so well. How much to get that? A lot.

It's all okay though, because there are lovely people out there in the world who don't think you should have to pay a lot for access to these things either (people are nice that way, you know?). OpenOffice.org provides a robust word processor/spreadsheet/database/presentation software package for free! It's what's called an open source project.

If you are used to the comparable Microsoft products, you'll have no problem with the word processor and spreadsheet. The programs can absolutely work with the files you have from any other application, and you can still save your file back to whatever format you want.

What's the catch? You have to download it. There's not much clipart preloaded in it. There are currently support manuals, which are sometimes tricky to find. I've got the link to the chapter index for the best ones here. Do you want Quick Reference Guides? A site called Burningsuit has great ones here (Pring them all!). The formatting capabilities in the database reports are weak. If you need something more like Access, you need to download an extension for that here.

The bottom line is, if you want good quality software, and can't or don't want to spend the money on Microsoft, you have to put in a little more effort, but the result is still great. And I love the idea of people helping each other on a project like this. Check them out. If it's not for you, pass the information along to a college student you like who might need it.