Microsoft Office alternative for Windows? [closed]

Is there something similar to Office for Windows but free? I am student living on a budget, Office is not an option at the moment.

Solution 1:

Try OpenOffice.org

Edit: Since the creation of this post, many if not most of the supporters of OpenOffice.org have migrated to LibreOffice, which was originally based on OpenOffice.org and now has a more active development than its parent project.

Solution 2:

There are a number of web-based Office services that are also free and offer some of the functionality of Microsoft Office, including:

Office Web Apps

Google Docs

Zoho Office

While these tend to lack the more advanced features of client-side Office suites, they do have excellent collaboration features.

Solution 3:

Search for your school through the MSDN Academic Alliance. Even if it's not free, it will be significantly cheaper (to the tune of $30 or less).

Solution 4:

You didn't specify if you need MS-Office interoperability.

AbiWord for word processing has some interoperability with MS-Word, and seems popular for people who find OpenOffice too cumbersome.

For spreadsheets, there's also Gnumeric although they seem to be a bit unsure as to the stability of the windows build.

I use OpenOffice personally, which does a pretty good job overall, including easy production of PDFs, and MS-Office interoperability as far as Word and Excel goes.

And of course, there's Google Docs that others have mentioned.

Solution 5:

Libre Office is another new kid on the block, created by former OpenOffice.org developers who left following the Oracle buyout of Sun. It's fairly new but releases seem to be coming thick and fast!