Office alternatives for the poor college-bound student

[Upchurch]

A friend IM'd me the other day on behalf of her younger sister who will be a freshman in college the fall. She apparently saved up for a new computer, but freaked out when she saw the $250 price tag for a copy of MS Office. My friend asked me if I had a copy I could give her. (The answer was yes, but of, let's say, questionable legality.)

After a brief chat, I figured out that she just needed something to do the job, not Office specifically. Here is the email I sent my friend to pass along:

There are a number of very good open-source (i.e. free) alternatives to Microsoft's Office software. What your sister chooses depends on her needs and she will probably end up with a combination.


OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/)
For a straight one-to-one alternative to the Microsoft Office suite of applications, OpenOffice is your thing. It has an equivalent to Word ( a.k.a. Writer), PowerPoint (Impress), Excel (Calc), Visio (Draw), and Access (Base). It does not have an equivalent to Outlook for email, calendars, contacts and to do lists.


Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/)
Mozilla has some of the things that OpenOffice lacks, namely Thunderbird for contacts and email and Sunbird for calendars. I have not used either one, but this the same company that makes FireFox which is about the best damn browser out there today. If you absolutely have to have your email, calendar, and contacts held locally on your computer, this is the way to go.


Google (http://mail.google.com/)
Google is literally making software that you have to install on your computer obsolete. Gmail allows you to download and send email from other services just like Outlook does. Which means that even though you are writing email in the google interface, you can still sending from your school/work/whatever email address. Once you have a gmail account, you can then sign up for Google's other services which includes a calendar and it's "documents". Unfortunately, this is still a pretty young system. Google's documents system only lets you do the equivalent of Microsoft's Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. The nice part about it is that you can access all your email, calendar, and files from any web browser on any computer. As long as you keep a good password and remember to log out when you are done, it is safe and convenient.


Of the above, I would recommend a combination of OpenOffice and Google. Use Google for your basic email, calendar and paper-writing needs. Use OpenOffice for when you need to do more fancy things. I also recommend that you use Firefox as your primary browser, but that's just a personal preference.


Beyond production software, I also have a few free security things you should load regardless of whether you take my other advice or not:

Ad-Aware ( http://www.lavasoftusa.com/)
Download the free version. This is an anti-spyware app that you should update and run daily. It can be set up to run automatically. Whatever it points out, tell it to remove it, even the non-critical things.

AVG (http://free.grisoft.com/)
Download the free basic protection version. This is an anti-virus software that is top of the line, better at stopping viruses, and uses less resources than most of the big name anti-virus companies like Symantec/Norton or McAfee. It can also be set up to run and update automatically.

What do you think? Did I lead her astray? Are there other, better alternatives that I didn't think of?

[GodMark2]

A friend IM'd me the other day on behalf of her younger sister who will be a freshman in college the fall. She apparently saved up for a new computer, but freaked out when she saw the $250 price tag for a copy of MS Office. My friend asked me if I had a copy I could give her. (The answer was yes, but of, let's say, questionable legality.)

After a brief chat, I figured out that she just needed something to do the job, not Office specifically. Here is the email I sent my friend to pass along:



What do you think? Did I lead her astray? Are there other, better alternatives that I didn't think of?

You just listed most of the contents of my "Do it for free" CD that I give out to anyone unwilling to pay hundreds of dollars for that stuff. I also include ZoneAlarm Basic, for those without a hardware firewall, Thunderbird, which can access their 'free' account at the university, and a few little things I can't remember off the top of my head.

About the only thing I don't agree with is Firefox being "The" best, I also include Opera, which is just as good (some would say one or the other is better because of specific feature X, but they both have their own "Feature X" that is better).

I also don't see on-line applications as bing a full substitute for a local version. The possibility for the local net connection to go down and take your term paper with it is a bit too much for me to risk, and experiencing edit-lag can turn a simple project into a nightmare. But, you advise they have OpenOffice anyway, so they can make that risk analysis themselves.

[this charming man]

I have used the Google Apps. They work fine, and you get free storage; as long as you save, you will never loose a document.

I also use AVAST! It's an anti-virus; it's free.

[Upchurch]

I also don't see on-line applications as bing a full substitute for a local version.
Well, I meant that they were on their way there, not that they were there yet.

Good call on the ZoneAlarm

[Little 10 Toes]

See if there is a student version of Office. Should be really low-cost. I think that she just has to promise not to resell it.

[ChristineR]

My needs for a spreadsheet are very basic, yet I quickly abandoned Google for Open Office.

[PogoPedant]

See if there is a student version of Office. Should be really low-cost. I think that she just has to promise not to resell it.

But does it beat Open Office's price tag of $0.00?


... students should all learn LaTeX, anyway... Superior to any graphic document handler for those large, collaborative works. :)

[ohms]

If they are running XP then Windows Defender (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx) is a useful additional anti spyware tool.

[Geek Goddess]

Many computers now come with Microsoft Works pre-installed, which includes spreadsheets, documents, etc, that can be saved into standard excel files. I used it quite extensively at one time.

[negativ]

OpenOffice is quality stuff. There are probably some things MS Office can do that can't be done easily (or at all) in OpenOffice, but I have yet to encounter them, and I've been using OpenOffice for a looooong time. Unless your friend's sister has profs that are doing some fairly arcane stuff with their documents and spreadsheets, she won't go wrong with OpenOffice.

MS Works is also a more-than-adequate product for 90% of users.

If your friend's sister is anything at all like most college young'uns I know, the main thing her profs are looking for is the ability to generate word processor documents (rarely spreadsheets, and very very rarely PowerPoint-type files) that can be opened by the prof, who is ostensibly using MS products.

[aerosolben]

See if there is a student version of Office. Should be really low-cost. I think that she just has to promise not to resell it.
Generally, a lot of software is available at a huge discount through the university's technology department. It's probably worthwhile to at least inquire there first - they may have other software that is useful as well.

Other than that, your summary seems fine.

[six7s]

A few other FREE apps from my list

CutePDF Writer : http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
its a 'printer subsystem' that enables virtually any 'printable' Windows app to create professional PDF documents with ease

ClamWin AV http://www.clamwin.com/
Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003
Will run (seemlessly*) alongside other AV products
* Only 'bug' is that each AV product will falsely identify other AV dB files as a virus

The GIMP http://www.gimp.org/
photo retouching, image composition and image authoring

Google Desktop Search: http://desktop.google.com/
can be (easily) configured to include/exclude emails, web history, and files
Great for anyone (e.g. students) generating many files...

Gmail: http://www.gmail.com
great for back-up (how many students haven't LOST work at the worst possible moment?) with 2893 MB (and growing) of FREE, indexed storage


Irfanview: http://www.irfanview.com/
a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003

________________________________

OpenOffice
What has been said before
Plus the community support is faster and easier than anything MS could ever hope to match - for novices and experts alike
Plus, the word processor creates XML documents: multi-platform :)
OpenOffice Community Forum http://www.oooforum.org/

Opera:
As mentioned above, Firefox and Opera each have their own strengths and weaknesses
Have both :)

[Hauteden]

Also check with the University itself. More and more Universities are getting "unlimited" licenses which a student can "take home" for $20 or so. It is only to be used while the student is attending that University.

Hauteden

[six7s]

MSDN Academic Alliance (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/academic/default.aspx): every pusher knows how to modulate supply in order to optimise demand

[grmcdorman]

A few other FREE apps from my list

Irfanview: http://www.irfanview.com/
a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003
Watch out with Irfanview. It's free for personal use only. Using in a commercial setting is not free:IrfanView is provided as freeware, but only for private, non-commercial use (that means at home).

IrfanView is free for educational use (schools, universities and libraries) and for use in charity or humanitarian organisations.I've had to point this out several times at work - and I think some people are still using it despite this.

[JonnyFive]

OpenOffice was a solid suggestion. It is terrible for heavy-duty spreadsheet (I've found it gets boggier than Excel with really big or complex sheets) or database (its database app is awful) stuff, but works great for pretty much anything a student could possibly need.

I've got MS Office '07 Pro on my home computer, and I find very little to recommend it over OpenOffice.org for a student.

AVG was also a good call, it's an excellent AV program.

[six7s]

OpenOffice ... is terrible for heavy-duty spreadsheet (I've found it gets boggier than Excel with really big or complex sheets)

I have a 2,256 KB (and still growing) 24-worksheet Calc file that just took 8 seconds to open from scratch (i.e. including OOo load time) that I have been using for five years now - with NO problems whatsoever:)

or database (its database app is awful) stuff
Have you tried 'BASE (http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1148271,00.html)' (new to Version 2)? It's no worse than Access (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1875288,00.asp) (which, granted, isn't exactly great) and, with typical open-source community involvement (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Category:Database) will only get better

I've got MS Office '07 Pro on my home computer, and I find very little to recommend it over OpenOffice.org for a student.

My (legal) copy of MS Office hasn't been reinstalled since three HDD formats ago - and I don't miss it at all

[JonnyFive]

I have a 2,256 KB (and still growing) 24-worksheet Calc file that just took 8 seconds to open from scratch (i.e. including OOo load time) that I have been using for five years now - with NO problems whatsoever:)

That's odd, I found it to have longer load times than Excel, and have crappy code integration.

Have you tried 'BASE (http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1148271,00.html)' (new to Version 2)? It's no worse than Access (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1875288,00.asp) (which, granted, isn't exactly great) and, with typical open-source community involvement (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Category:Database) will only get better

Oh yes, I have tried BASE. In fact, when looking for a decent database to store quotes in, I ran a feasibility study on BASE because it's free.

It ran slowly, crashed frequently (resulting in a loss of the test database in some cases), and took a long time to index and view the data. I had a small database, about 12,000 records, and scrolling down through the data was a serious pain in the ass.

The biggest thing that got me is the poor integration of the code. I know it has code support on the forms, but the way it handled it wasn't nearly as smooth as Access, and from my experimentation I think it would be difficult to write a solid app using BASE as a (pardon the pun) base. On the other hand, I can (and do) use Access as what amounts to a rapid development platform for VB 6.

Even if I could get the code/form stuff working the way I need it to, it's still a fairly unstable platform.

Access is actually a pretty good system to use on smaller (< 1 million records or so) databases. It provides good intergration with VB (which gives you a lot of flexibility), and its a relatively stable platform. I've used critical stuff under Access at two companies now (one system I designed, the other I just worked with), and we never had any serious problems with it.

Anything bigger and you're better off using an SQL database anyway (although front-ends can be designed using Access - dunno about BASE's ability to access SQL data), and there are several choices in that market.

My (legal) copy of MS Office hasn't been reinstalled since three HDD formats ago - and I don't miss it at all

Whatever floats your boat. Like I said, I had no major problem with OpenOffice, but I slightly prefer Office. I have both of them installed at work, but I just don't find myself using OpenOffice very much.

[Upchurch]

My only complaint with OpenOffice, as mentioned above, is the lack of an Outlook alternative. I finally did make the transition over from Outlook to Gmail even though the PDA sync solution I found cost me $30 and I still can't sync my contacts without doing the manual export/import BS.

None of that matters to a student, i would imagine, but it kinda irked me some.

[JonnyFive]

My only complaint with OpenOffice, as mentioned above, is the lack of an Outlook alternative. I finally did make the transition over from Outlook to Gmail even though the PDA sync solution I found cost me $30 and I still can't sync my contacts without doing the manual export/import BS.

None of that matters to a student, i would imagine, but it kinda irked me some.

Nah, none of my issues with OpenOffice would affect a student in the slightest. It's a great piece of software, and costs nothing.

I should add that I've been having periodic issues with AVG deciding that certain programs (usually games) contain non-existant viruses and causing them to stop working until you reinstall the program, turn off AVG, or get it to exclude those programs from its ResidentShield service. It's not a big issue, and probably won't come up often.

Still, there is also a program called Avast! (http://www.avast.com/) that does a good job with the anti-virus thing too, and it supports some features that AVG doesn't (like P2P protection).

[four elevener]

If your friend's sister really wants MS Office and can afford to shell out $149, she can get the latest academic version. I've often seen it on sale for $129 at various retail outlets, depending on their weekly ad. The latest version replaces Outlook with Microsoft OneNote, so if she needs Outlook, she can prolly find an academic version of the previous version (2003) for $99.

[mhaze]

Don't forget that brand new unopened software one or two versions back is on ebay not atypically for 20% of retail.

[DiskoVilante]

This site: http://softwarefor.org/ is specially made for students who want free software. They've collected some of the best free applications into one place. I suggest you check it out.

From the site:

Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We've gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

[Morrigan]

OpenOffice was a solid suggestion. It is terrible for heavy-duty spreadsheet (I've found it gets boggier than Excel with really big or complex sheets)
Absolutely. I once exported a huge list into a .csv file, which ended up taking around 7 megs. While I realise it's not a normal use, well, my Excel opened it in less than 5 seconds, while my boyfriend's OpenOffice (on a better computer, at the time, mind you) completely froze and crashed.

This will no doubt be the last time I ever take the side of a Microsoft product, though. :newlol

[six7s]

Give it time...

Excel 1.0 was released in 1985 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Versions) OpenOffice 1.0 in 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice#History)

IBM joins the OpenOffice.org community to develop and promote OpenOffice.org technology (http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html)

10 September 2007 -- The OpenOffice.org community today announced that IBM will be joining the community to collaborate on the development of OpenOffice.org software
<snip/>
Besides working with the community on the free productivity suite's software, IBM will also leverage OpenOffice.org technology in its products.

[MortFurd]

Give it time...

Excel 1.0 was released in 1985 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel#Versions) OpenOffice 1.0 in 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openoffice#History)

IBM joins the OpenOffice.org community to develop and promote OpenOffice.org technology (http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html)
Yes, and OpenOffice is a decendant of StarOffice, which dates from about the same time (company founded in 1984.) Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice)


Still, OO vs MS Office is a give and take. MS Office doesn't export to PDF, the OO spreadsheet program has trouble with huge spreasheets, and Word sucks for large documents. Use whatever's best for the task if you have both, and OO if you need to save money.

[Cuddles]

There is, or at least was, a student version of MS Office that only cost about £20, as opposed to something like £150. It may have been OEM only though, so might not be available without buying a new computer.

As for OpenOffice, I would stay away as much as possible. Our entire university switched to OpenOffice and caused huge problems. Although it claims to be compatible with Word, it isn't. Anything more than very basic formatting is changed or completely disappeared, including Greek letters and equations. This can cause some problems when trying to print out a Masters thesis. If you want more just word processin, as others have mentioned the spreadsheet and database suck quite badly.

While many people say they don't have problems at all, there are plenty who do and it really doesn't seem worth the risk. If all you want to do is work on your own computer, it's probably fine. If you want to regularly use different systems and formats, avoid OO like the plague.

[JonnyFive]

Still, OO vs MS Office is a give and take. MS Office doesn't export to PDF, the OO spreadsheet program has trouble with huge spreasheets, and Word sucks for large documents. Use whatever's best for the task if you have both, and OO if you need to save money.

This is my feeling on the matter.

The native export to PDF is really nice, although a copy of CutePDF can be had to export from any program that can print, which is even nicer.

[aerosolben]

MS Office doesn't export to PDF

Yes it does: linky (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en)

I believe there were/are legal issues preventing it from being built-in or available with previous versions of Office.

[aerosolben]

dupe

[JonnyFive]

Yes it does: linky (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en)

I believe there were/are legal issues preventing it from being built-in or available with previous versions of Office.

Sweet! I am so downloading that when I get home, thanks!

[MortFurd]

Yes it does: linky (https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=F1FC413C-6D89-4F15-991B-63B07BA5F2E5&displaylang=en)

I believe there were/are legal issues preventing it from being built-in or available with previous versions of Office.
Yeah, if you have MS Office 2007. OO has been doing this since V1.0 came out years ago.

Does it also let you make fillable PDFs like OO does?

[aerosolben]

Yeah, if you have MS Office 2007. OO has been doing this since V1.0 came out years ago.
Okay. If it were 2002, you would have been correct. Happy?

Does it also let you make fillable PDFs like OO does?
Damned if I know - I haven't used the feature, I'm just aware of it.

[four elevener]

Microsoft is offering it's high-end version of Office 2007 to currently-enrolled college students for $60 as a new promotion (http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9777020-7.html).

[Tom Morris]

But does it beat Open Office's price tag of $0.00?


... students should all learn LaTeX, anyway... Superior to any graphic document handler for those large, collaborative works. :)

Absolutely. LaTeX is great, and LyX makes it usable. The math/sci people fawn over it, but I think it's as useful for humanities work too. BibTeX is tremendously useful if you get fed up writing and re-writing bibliography entries.

Just to use a completely un-scientific personal experience: I wrote my (quite research-heavy) undergraduate dissertation in philosophy with LyX, and aced it (first class). I don't think I could have done it without the LaTeX stack. If I had written it in Word or OpenOffice (etc.), I think it would have taken me much longer. Without me doing it again, of course, there's no easy way to tell - but I'm a lifelong fan of LyX/LaTeX as a result of the amount of stress and time it saved me while writing my dissertation.

I'm currently working on a book-like project (technical documentation, to be precise - probably going to release them under the GFDL or equivalent, but may also try and flog them to a publisher) and I'm using DocBook XML - and writing the XML by hand in Oxygen. I can press one button and see what my *book* looks like. Takes nine seconds on my machine to render into a production-quality PDF, which I can open up on a second screen and compare with the source.

I really don't like WYSIWYG tools for writing - it's actually a terrible drag, because when you are writing you should care about the structure and the meaning. The presentation may be your choice, or it may be that of a style guide. WYSIWYM tools (What You See Is What You Mean) take a bit of thinking because they go against all the marketing that the software companies have been flogging, but once you get used to them, you won't ever want to go back. It also forces you to focus on either content or presentation. If you use a WYSIWYG tool, you can work on both simultaneously. WYSIWYM forces you to try and separate out how it looks from what it actually says.

If you want to do presentations, I suggest Eric Meyer's S5 (http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/) package. You basically create a web page, and then it runs JavaScript over it to get a presentation that looks like this (http://conferences.opiumfield.com/barcamplondon2/talks/semweb/).

I can't remember the last time I used a spreadsheet. I just dump all my data in to some kind of open data structure (JSON array) and then process it using Python, interactively. I can't actually see the point in spreadsheets at all. Just an inefficient graph machine.

As for databases? For small databases, just use arrays. For medium-sized databases, I use flat-file triple storage. I can query it very easily. For large databases, just use SQL.

Are these user-friendly? No. But neither is, oh, playing the piano or fixing a car. You've got to learn how to use them to do it well. Nothing wrong with learning. All of the tools I've listed are free (with the exception of Oxygen, which is $48 for an academic license).

[aerosolben]

For large databases, just use SQL.
Of course, but which implementation? ;)

[Hauteden]

On the topics of Free and Software. Does anyone use a free DVD Burning Utility? If it can be setup to perform unattended backups it would be icing on the cake.

ETA: Oh and not having "un-anticipated enhancements"* would be nice. :)


*you might call them adware or spyware

[Wudang]

Of course, but which implementation? ;)

DB/2 of course you benighted heathen. How can you live without WITH?

[KoihimeNakamura]

I stopped using the gimp, but I can recommend

Paint.NET (http://www.getpaint.net/)

Only downside is that it requires .NET be installed.

[jman19999]

MS Office is sickeningly over-priced for what you get. I still use Office 97 on Windows XP and it works fine with about 99.9% of what I do. There are also free Office converters and viewers that you can get from MS website that will help if you have trouble opening a newer file and are still an Office 97/2000 user. Go to:

www.microsoft.com and do a search for Office Converters. You will get converters and viewers that you can download for free to help make older versions of Office run better with newer files. (Sure beats spending between $250-$450 for a new version.) The only thing is, if you are still an Office 97/2000 user, DON'T use MS Outlook. It's too big of a security risk. Outlook users should be running at least Outlook 2002 (with updates installed. Run Windows Update or Microsoft Update once a month, or set Windows Update to automatic ) and a quality anti-virus program. (I also recommend the free version of AVG)

If you don't want to spend the money for an Office upgrade, (and as a home user, I would see no reason to do so) consider Open Office. www.openoffice.org. It's free, constantly updated, and secure. For e-mail programs, if you are interested in a web-based e-mail program, I would recommend Yahoo Mail (which now has free UNLIMITED storage!) or Google's G-Mail. For an ISP based e-mail program, I have heard nothing but good things about Thunderbird. (From Mozilla.) My preference for the browser of choice is Firefox.

For home users, world processing is word processing and even for college, rest assured that no professor is going to care what version of word processing program you use. I would estimate that 75% of the people who use ANY Office version are using Word most of the time. Therefore, many people are paying for Office products that they are never going to use.

Other alternatives for Word Processing are World Perfect and you can pick that up as a stand alone program for $40. Star Office is another Office package that runs for about $80 and has Word Processing, Spreadsheet, and I think a database manager, not sure. Star Office is actually the commercial version of Open Office. So if you don't already have a Word Processing program on your computer and you need that along with a spreadsheet, and database, I would go with Open Office in addition to my suggestions above.

Jeff

[grmcdorman]

IBM has just announced their own free office suite. Go to symphony.lotus.com (http://symphony.lotus.com) for details, including the press release. It's said to be currently based on OpenOffice.org.

A discussion can be found at Slashdot, of course: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/18/1155252

[six7s]

OpenOffice Press Release re IBM:
IBM joins the OpenOffice.org community to develop and promote OpenOffice.org technology (http://www.openoffice.org/press/ibm_press_release.html)

[illogical]

i would use OpenOffice (or other) and view the final work in Word/Excel/Powerpoint Viewer. just to see how it will look on MS software.

[JonnyFive]

One thing that does seem to sort of suck about OO.org's Calc is that, unlike Excel, it doesn't appear to have an option to display regression line equations on the graph. There are, however, freeware apps that can provide this functionality for the math students out there.

Also, it doesn't seem to offer polynomial regression lines at all, which is annoying.