{"id":15,"date":"2007-10-03T12:48:28","date_gmt":"2007-10-03T18:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/?p=15"},"modified":"2007-10-03T13:44:51","modified_gmt":"2007-10-03T19:44:51","slug":"microsoft-office-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/microsoft-office-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Office Alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tired of paying an arm, a leg, and a kidney to be able to type someone a letter, create a budget, or make a presentation?  I know I am, but for the longest time, Microsoft has had a corner on this market and they have chosen to consumers to look for alternatives or install illegal version of the software on their computer (which I refuse to do, being a novice programmer).<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, IBM announced a  free version of <a href=\"http:\/\/ct.download.com\/clicks?t=40334451-bcf74b48dbca6bd93c7940b90a3d7fcd-bf&amp;s=5&amp;fs=0\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Download it from download.com\">Lotus  Symphony<\/a>. It is still in beta, so I wouldn&#8217;t recommend using it exclusively, but once it is out of beta, it would be well worth a look at.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the other popular alternative, which I currently use at my home is  <a href=\"http:\/\/ct.download.com\/clicks?t=40334452-bcf74b48dbca6bd93c7940b90a3d7fcd-bf&amp;s=5&amp;fs=0\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Download it from download.com\">OpenOffice.org<\/a>, and while it is decent, it is lacking with mail merge and a few other features.<br \/>\nBoth of the programs support Microsoft Office file formats, which is great for compatibility with the rest of the world.<\/p>\n<p>One other alternative, worth mentioning is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/a\/help\/intl\/en\/users\/dands.html\" title=\"Go to Google Docs Page\" target=\"_blank\">Google&#8217;s Docs<\/a> which allows you to use a word processor, spreadsheet and even a presentation program.  It is a great service that allows you access documents from any location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tired of paying an arm, a leg, and a kidney to be able to type someone a letter, create a budget, or make a presentation? I know I am, but for the longest time, Microsoft has had a corner on &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/microsoft-office-alternatives\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-randomlings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nealbreeding.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}