My mom recently asked me if I had an old copy of Microsoft Office she could put on her newer computer. I do, but it is very old, remember Office 95.  So I told that there were many free  Microsoft Office replacements available in either downloadable software or as an online service. I sent her an email with the following and thought I would share it with you with some additional information:

Most of these applications offer full compatibility or at leaset compatibility up to version 2003. Some items like macros may not translate, but the all ofthe data in the files should.

OpenOffice: a well supported open source extensive office suite. There are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, however Mac users may want to explore NeoOffice which is built on OPenOffice, but offers better integration with the Aqua interface.

The Google Pack: Google bundles a lot of cool free software together (check out Google Earth) and automatically keeps it up to date. It includes the commercial version of OpenOffice called StarOffice. This is only available for Windows.

IBM Lotus Symphony: IBM has resurrected the old Lotus Symphony suite, but this time iti s built on top of OpenOffice. It uses a slighter older version but it has a nicer interface and features like Data Pilot in the spredsheet program which is similar to pivat tables in Excel. 

Google Docs: offers a free online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program that you can use with any internet connected computer. I personally use this for a variety of documents, including a monthly expense spreadsheet I share with my wife so that both of us can keep it up to date.

Here's a little video that explains the benefits of Google Docs:

 

 

 

ThinkFree - another free online alternative to MS Office. It is ad supported with an optional ad-free premium service. You can store up to 1 GB and open and export complex Office 2007 documents.

Zoho: This is an online service that lets you do just about anything, including word processing, web conferencing, project management, customer relationship managment, presentations, chatting , email and so on.  The interfaces are not always consistent and sometimes the performance is sluggish, but no other online site others the wide variety programs Zoho does. I use Zoho to maintain some online databases and project management applications I created with the Creator application which I can also embded in our intranet wiki. It is also a good tool to use to create complex interactive forms that you can embed into your web site and no one would know the difference. 

DabbleDB: This is not an office suite and it is not free, but if you need an onine database that you want to share with others then you need to check out this amazing web application. Check out this demo: