• Free Alternatives: Part 3

    Free Alternatives: Part 3

    Nikhil Rastogi, Oct 21, 2007 1244 hrs IST

    Office suites, Web browsers, email clients, and download managers

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This is the third sequel to the freeware alternative story. To recap, last week we looked at all photo, audio, and video editors that are good to have. Today we'll look at office suites, Web browsers, email clients, and download managers -- the essentials for computing in today's world.

Office Office
Microsoft Office is perhaps the most popular software used more widely than Windows itself! In fact, Microsoft first came out with Office way back in 1989 for Mac, and then introduced it for Windows a year later. Though this is still my preferred office system, with Word 2000 still doing the job adequately for me, there are a bunch of Microsoft Office alternatives that are excellent (some paid, while some ad-supported). There's however only one which stands out as the best free alternative among them: OpenOffice.



OpenOffice

OpenOffice is Microsoft Office in the freeware avatar; it contains completely free counterparts to every component within the suite. You have Writer (Word counterpart), Calc (Excel counterpart), Impress (Powerpoint counterpart), Draw, Base (Access counterpart), and Math. While most are self explanatory, Draw is a vector drawing tool to create simple illustrations and 3D illustrations, Math lets one create complex mathematical equations in a unique graphical interface or by directly typing formulas into the equation editor; the formulas of which can be easily used across suite components such as Calc and Impress. Another great advantage of going for OpenOffice is that it's multiplatform (works on Windows, Linux and Mac) and multilingual (includes Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Bengali). For those concerned about opening Microsoft Office files, fret not because OpenOffice can do that quite well and also make PDF documents on the fly. What more could one ask for?


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Related Links
Free Alternatives: Part 1
FlashGot
First Look at Opera Mini 4.2



Discussion Board
(19) Comments
Raj
,Mumbai, on Sep 19, 2010 06:21 PM
OpenOffice is now with Oracle. It'll soon have huge price tag
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ROHIT
,DELHI, on Jul 19, 2010 10:46 PM
SIMPLY TELL ABOUT HOW TO MAKE FREE CALL PC TO MOBILE
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ROHIT
,DELHI, on Jul 19, 2010 10:45 PM
SIMPY TELL ABOURT HOW TO MAKE FREE CALL PC TO MOBILE
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ajay
,tvpm, on Jul 11, 2010 02:37 PM
freee downloard
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ravikumar
,hyderabad, on Jul 06, 2010 10:23 AM
hi iam ravikumar
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rasheed
,doha, on Jan 13, 2010 03:48 AM
how to make free call from my pc without mony
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sikligar keval
,surat, on Jan 07, 2009 03:26 PM
its good....
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Dr. K. A. Rashe
,Manjeri Kerala, on Oct 22, 2007 09:41 PM
Please try to compare 'FreeDownlad Manager with 'Orbit' downloader. The latter is perhaps the simplest. It also enables to record streaming videos
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Sanjib
,Pune, on May 06, 2008 07:57 PM
FDM has more features as compared to Orbit. But for some Orbit was consistently faster than FDM while downloading. I use a 256 Kbps broadband connection from BSNL. I was getting around 90-130 Kbps download speed with FDM whereas with Orbit I was getting around 150-170 Kbps download speed.
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gujubhai
,mumbai, on Nov 01, 2007 10:44 AM
a decent M$ outlook alternative is still wanting. any one pitch in with something that exists??? tasks, to-do, calendering, journaling, reminders, contactDB with user addon fields, outlook rocks, but costs serious $$. free alternatives to it would be a rockstar!!!
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Azeem Shaikh
,Mumbai, on Oct 22, 2007 04:14 PM
Avant Browser rocks!
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PP CHAUKIMATH
,PANIPAT, on Oct 26, 2007 04:14 PM
Agree. In case u are stuck up with IE and can not use FF or Opera for any reasons ( company standardisation for one) try Avant Browser ( works with IE engine). It is fabulous and in my personal opinion, it is far better than maxthon addon. PP CHAUKIMATH
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chiradip
,Bangalore, on Oct 23, 2007 10:18 PM
The readers also may try Dream-mail at http://www.dreammail.org/ It supports POP3 along with Hotmail and Yahoo! but not IMAP (AOL/AIM or Fastmail). Still it is nice.
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Girish S
,bangalore, on Oct 23, 2007 07:27 PM
You also forgot about Safari, quiet a decent browser, simple in its looks, sure is fast as Apple claimed and has some useful features.
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Girish S
,bangalore, on Oct 23, 2007 07:25 PM
Open Office is sure as close as one can get to MS Office. But had one problem though, with calc the last time I had used it. It would not support macros in excel worksheets. Dont know if it is supported by the current version.
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Feliciano
,Mar del Plata, on Oct 23, 2007 02:43 AM
Excellent comment.
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badvt
,Chennai, on Oct 21, 2007 07:36 PM
To say draw is a tool to create simple illustrations is a gross understatement. I have used it to produce drawings to-scale for some structural fabrications and for most other things too. Equation editor is another wonderful feature. Calc surpasses Excel in some fields (matrix calculations to name one). Creating graphs is one thing i am yet to get the hang of, i find Excel easier for this.
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Linux Fan
,Mumbai, on Oct 21, 2007 05:32 PM
I guess there can be a whole article on various free Operating Systems itself. I mean there are so many different 'distributions' of the sytem, most of them capable of giving Windows and Mac users, a run for their money. I suggested it even last time when the second part of these series on "Free Alternatives" came out. Hope you guys give it a shot
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nsunnyb4u
,Hyderabad, on Oct 21, 2007 06:17 PM
yeah.. may be something like best llinux distros which can play games (without using Cedega), which can be to play media files with ease and can be used by anyone without knowing shell, bash, -rw--r--w (like me.. :()
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