Siani's tip of the week - Open Office!

I had a free trial of MS Office with my laptop, but it expired the other day. I don't have £350 or more to spend on office software, and don't want to use pirated software, so I went hunting around the net, to see what I could find. I discovered and downloaded the Open Office suite the other day, and its word processing program is fantastic, especially when you install a few extras with it. It's easier to use than MS Office, and the plugins add more functionality to it than Office 2007. Even without the add-ons, you can turn your documents into PDFs.

Guess how much I paid for all this? Nothing! Open Office is open source software, from Sun Microsystems - the people who created Java. And no, they're not paying me to tell you about this! I just love Open Office, especially considering the price tag. But be careful - only download it from the Open Office site or Download.com. There are dodgy sites around that try to charge you for Open Office - which is utterly illegal.

I really don't know how Microsoft can justify charging so much for their Office software. Even their home/student version is £100, and you don't get the full range of Office applications. Open Office also gives you equivalents of Access, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. Its terminology is a little different to Microsoft's, but it's very easy to use. You'll need to install a few add-ons, as it doesn't arrive with as many templates as MS Office, but considering it's a freebie, it's worth waiting a few minutes to download the extras. Stuff you, Microsoft!!!