MS Office free equivalent?

[bczoom]

Mentioned in another thread that I got a new laptop.
Very casual use but expect the need to open or create Word & Excel type documents.
I see there's lots of aftermarket free versions of Office

Any recommendations on which free version?

 

[Doc]

I've used Open Office for years. Have not tried any other free version.
It can create a document or spreadsheet and save it in Word or Excel format so you can share with others.
Here is a link for the download.

Download Apache OpenOffice

Join the OpenOffice revolution, the free office productivity suite with over 360 million trusted downloads.

www.openoffice.org

they also make thunderbird a free email client. Works great.

 

[bczoom]

Thanks!
Daughter mentioned Libre. That came up as one of the first couple in the internet search. Thoughts?

 

[chowderman]

there are a number of "no cost" applications that will read/write MS Office files.
most come with caveats "some features may not be supported"
for simple stuff, not an issue.
but you cannot control stuff other people send you which may have "features . . . ."

check eBay/et al for "outdated versions" - the most "reliable" buys are those with a CD (vs. keys to "downloaded . . .")
prices are in the $50 range. and Office 16+ (and maybe earlier...) provide free updates to read / write the 'docx' 'xlsx' MS formats.
it's one of those "safer bets" in dealing with MicroSoft . . .

me, two kids and one cousin did the 'outdated' approach and haven't had issues.
yes . . . I have three kids. one is a Mac-head. currently making bundles on VR reality games for Google . . .
there is life beyond MicroSoft . . . .

 

[XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq]

I think LibreOffice is the current best option. There was some thing that happened and LibreOffice was branched from OpenOffice. They are similar. Anyways, I've used LibreOffice for years and it works fine for most things.

 

[Smilingreen]

I still have my genuine copy of Office 98.....along with my copy of Windoze 98 SE.......and also a copy of DOS 6.1, Win 3.1, Win NT4.0 and a copy of OS2/Warp.......that should shake the ladies out of the bushes......

I tossed the Windows 95 floppies and the original Win 98 disc.......

 

[Smilingreen]

I quit Microsoft products when they introduced Win 8. I was a beta tester for Win 10. Was not impressed at all. So, I have a bunch of PC's all running Win 7 Pro. You can snag those puppies up all day long on e-bay for a song and dance..

 

[Doc]

I still have a couple windows 98 CD's. Even have a few old puters around that might work if i fired them up ....I should toss the whole lot as I see no reason ever to go there again.

 

[Smilingreen]

I still have a couple windows 98 CD's. Even have a few old puters around that might work if i fired them up ....I should toss the whole lot as I see no reason ever to go there again.

I agree. I purge old computers and computer parts about once every five years. Still have a couple of old Pentium based "laptop" computers that can run the 98 SE OS. I have one laptop that the keyboard has both English characters and Japanese characters on it. It has 98 SE on it and I took it into work a few years ago to link to some ancient VFD drives that required a true 5V serial port connection to link to it so you could get to the drive parameters. All of the laptops we had in the place were too new to connect to the drive!