Tip #1 Free Open Source Office Applications

Its great that finally we are given the opportunity to be able to use free apps that give us many of the same features of Microsoft Office, but for free. In this post I will mentiontwo increasingly popular options for the user who wants a Office like app, but pay no money.

First up is my favorite ,Open Office.org.
http://download.openoffice.org/index.html

I was introduced to this a few years ago and find myself using it more then any other office suite. I suppose the first reason is that it is free. The download is about 100 megs and they do have updates and they are continually improving the app. Included in the Open Office Suite are many of the same programs you might find in a Microsoft Office suite. The interface is simple to get, no fancy bells and whistles, but all the important tools and options you need to create great documents, spreadsheets, presentations and even databases.

Next up is the online, Zoho site.
http://www.zoho.com/

This is a exciting pioneer in the world of online ASP's (active server pages) and allows you to be able to use a word program, spreadsheet program, presentation program and much more. They even offer a few more apps then Open Office including a note taker, project management. The only draw back is that the time it takes to open the different on line apps at Zoho can be a little lengthy sometimes. This is due to quite a large live editing program running solely on the net. Besides the little wait time, its well worth a look at.