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Best Free Downloads For Your Computer 3

by Terrence O'Brien on June 6, 2008 at 12:17 PM



AbiWord / Open Office (XP/Vista/OS X/Linux)

Microsoft Office is an excellent suite of work programs, but it's expensive, and often more than the average user needs. When is the last time you fired up Excel outside of your cubicle? Or even looked at Access, Microsoft's database program? So pick up AbiWord instead, a free and open source word processor that has all the most useful features of Microsoft Word without any of the bloat that slows down your PC. If you need a full-fledged office suite with a spreadsheet application and presentation software, then look into Open Office, yet another free and open source offering (noticing a trend here?).

Open Office's Word Processor is every bit as good as Microsoft Word. While its spreadsheet application is nowhere near as powerful as Excel, it is certainly an acceptable replacement for most tasks. And here's the best news: Whatever you create on Open Office or AbiWord also works on Microsoft Office (and vice-versa, so any Excel or Word docs you need to work with will open up in AbiWord or Open Office).

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