I've always been using Microsoft Office for all my document processing needs. Word, Excel, PowerPoint... The only problem is that it's a bit costly to use MS Office. The have been a lot of free document processors that cropped up recently. Which do you prefer? Free or paid? What are the pros and cons?
Well there's Google Docs and Free Office, they're all free. When I bought my laptop, it came equipped with MS Office so I can't say much about the price, but judging the way I use MS Office and my overall experience with it, I'd say there not much you're missing when you go for the free stuff. The only pros/cons I know of is that when using free software, the'res bound to be a lack of extra features that can help you do your job faster as supposed to having a paid one, since you get what you pat for. But it solely depends on the complexity of what your doing, if you're just going to type a document and print it out, then you're better off with the free ones.
I think paid programs like MS Office are a rip off unless you're doing some kind of professional work that requires something the free programs don't have. I remember certain school reports requiring these office formats but thankfully my computer at the time came with the right programs installed. I recently heard about Kingsoft Office, which is like the free Chinese rip off version of MS Office. It's supposedly pretty good. Wonder if anyone has used it.
I findLog In to be a perfectly acceptable substitute for Microsoft Office. The pros are that it's free and can install it on as many computers as you want, so if you need to reinstall your operating system, you don't need to go looking for serial keys. The downside is that it isn't as sleek as Office/Word in places, but it can do pretty much everything Office/Word can. As deathbyprayer said, Google docs are also quite good, but will require internet access all the time.
For as much as I use Microsoft Word, I feel the price was worthwhile. I have used the same copy for many years on the same computer, too, so it's been really cheap/efficient over the years. If you're only occasionally viewing or editing documents, though, then there are a lot of free options that are just as sufficient.
There's a program a word processing program I saw on a friend's computer recently that's almost the same as MS WORD. It was open-source software so I suppose the developers had much to borrow from WORD. Since it worked just like Word, could open and edit WORD documents, I think such software should be what we guys use. Why pay for software when there's a free alternative that does the job quite well? p.s I'll find out what software that was, and tell you more about it.
