MS Word / Excel......Alternatives???

[YosemitePaul]

I now use Firefox and Thunderbird for my Internet and E Mail requirements. If I want to totally get rid of MS Office on my system what are the recommendations as alternatives to Word and Excel??
Any thoughts??

Thanks.

Paul

 

[ianf]

i'm using neooffice for osx quite happily. It's a port of openoffice for the mac.

see www.openoffice.org for a 93mb download.

Things like powerpoint themes are a bit thin on the ground, and chartin options in excel aren't quite as intuitive as the MS versions, but on a whole they work fine and interoperate pretty well with the MS stuff.

 

[scottpa]

You could try open office. It's a free open-source package containing amongst other applications a word processor and spreadsheet that will open and save as MS Office files for compatability.
http://www.openoffice.org/index.html

 

[Andybro]

Open Office is the one the magazines harp on about - and it's free! If you don't use the advanced functions in excel (mainly visual basic) then Open Office will achieve most things you need.
http://www.ukgser.com/forums/images/smilies/rob.gif

 

[MMC]

If you want an awesome copywriting/wordcruncher, take a look atScrivener. It's a phenomenal bit of kit. Been using it for a month now, and for long-form work it's increased the speed I can work by about 100%.

 

[longdog]

Go for Open Office. It will run almost all the programs created in MS Office too, making it a genuine alternative to the Micro$oft product. And it's free!!!

 

[GPLongford]

They are all correct! When You reach the limit for what Open Office can do, You have some university to found Your work!