Having just bought a new laptop I am wondering if there is anything else than Microsoft Office, Office is coming out at £119 for a one off payment so tight bugger here is wondering if there are any others just as good but maybe cheaper ? Regards Mike.
Hello Mike Have a look here http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/free-office-software#libreoffice Regards Clive
I used Open Office for a while. It was fine on its own but I regularly had problems opening Word documents created by others and the children had been getting niggly about school work.. In the end, I just gave up and coughed up.
Google docs is pretty good, and I think now better than Open Office or Libre. https://www.google.com/docs/about/ It can be used offline with a bit of setup, and their free suite now includes a spreadsheet and presentation stuff. Always seems pretty stable. Never had a problem opening anything.
I've used both OpenOffice and LibreOffice, (as well as GoogleDocs). Have to agree, sometimes first two they were glitchy when converting and often layout, but if you can bear with the niggles, they are a good option to Micro$oft Office. GoogleDocs I haven't used for ages; it was very capable and I still have some files on my GoogleDrive from years ago, (that surprisingly) I can still access.
Sorry if I'm being a bit thick, Mike, but, if you previously owned a satisfactory copy and haven't meanwhile sold or given away your (lifetime) licence to use it, why don't you just install it on your new baby and carry on from there ? Or maybe you're one of those many folk who merely lack a backup copy of the installation media to do so ? In that case, it's no very big deal to source an appropriate disk image file and burn a CD±R copy of it for your own legitimate future use. FWIW, I have several different versions sitting round, to maybe suit you out of hand, so you've merely to specify for me to maybe help you set the ball rolling if I've guessed aright Cheers, Steve
Corel WordPerfect is an excellent program. The "reveal codes" feature is particularly useful in stripping inherited or unwanted code out of text. There is even a "find and replace" feature for code as well as text. A better program than MS Word, but without the corporate muscle behind it. Also, much, much cheaper!
Thanks guys for all your advice I will look into all of it and decide which way I will go cheers. Steve unfortunately I had a clear out and guess what I threw it out doh ! what a thicky I am. Cheers Mike.
Well, you don't really need physical licence bumph as I, for one, have never heard of Microsloth police picking on individual users - probably not least because the cost of doing so would far outweigh any fine they could levy. As it sounds like you're still on the moral high ground - having merely mislaid your proof as can easily result from natural disasters (such as fire/flood) - I fail to see anything to stop you taking the pragmatic measures I outlined earlier. I, for example, was allowed to keep my works PC when I was made redundant ... and, effectively with it, the corporate licence rights that had applied to it. On this basis, for vital instance, I'm still protecting it with McAfee VirusScan Enterprise updating itself daily. The Office version was corporately frozen at 2000 Standard SR1, pending a better version I'd argue M$ have still yet to churn out, and that suits me fine - crucially for its Outlook 2k SR1 which I still rely upon daily. It now being 16yrs old, though, I have, a while since, taken the liberty of upgrading to the Premium edition so as to get PowerPoint for the unlikely occasion when I might actually want to create a presentation rather than merely watch one ... for which there's always M$'s free viewer of course. I've also got disk images for versions as late as 2013 which I've tried and hastily rejected as disastrously retrograde ... but each to his own. The nice thing about enterprise versions, BTW, is that they self-sufficiently don't need activating like their domestic cousins - hence not sticker-dependent for getting them up & going. Finally, having said that I mainly use Office for its Outlook mailer, I'm amused to see the foregoing recommendations apparently under the delusion that Word is all it has to offer. Prior to Office, FWIW, our official key applications were (pre-Corel) WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 but went to Office simply to maximise our compatibility with other organisations all toeing the M$ line.. In 2002, as their official Excel ex-spurt, I was asked to assess Sun StarOffice 6's spreadsheet application as part of an overall comparison contemplating a change to it and here's my report FWIW: So seemingly just a bunch of niggles, at that stage, of which it wasn't my place to predict the corporate effect but which individuals, not bound by corporate procedures, might more easily accept according to their taste. For some reason, possibly more to do with my Word colleague's report (of which I don't have a copy) or some other factor like inertia, we never did make the switch ! Then again, a lot of people had invested a lot of time developing & perfecting Word & Excel macros by then and many some of them were probably no longer around to even flinch at the thought of undertaking their further conversion soon enough to keep business running smoothly ... So it's your call with no further pressure from me, Steve
Another option is EvilBay - you could pick up a used copy (with all the relevant documentation), or grab one from the US at a cheaper price. It all depends on what version you're after: http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Office-Business-/3768/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=microsoft+office
