Microsoft Office alternatives: Open Word docs without opening your wallet

Microsoft Office is probably the most recognized productivity suite known in the world, but it comes with a hefty price tag. Ranging from $130 for Student edition to $540 for the Ultimate edition, many users find themselves in need of the ability to create and save Word and Excel files but cannot afford the Microsoft Suite.

If you are one of the many users who cannot afford Microsoft Office 2007, then you are in luck. In recent years more and more options have come available to users who need to be able to create documents.

• ThinkFree Online - ThinkFree's Online edition is a very powerful and robust office suite. It has word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation apps which are all compatible with Microsoft Office Formats. Store documents online, allow friends to join you in creating and editing documents as well as share documents by email. Price = FREE.
  
• ThinkFree Premium Edition - ThinkFree Premium Edition is a desktop application that gives you all of the functionality of ThinkFree Online but Offline. It has the ability to auto synchronize your documents online and off, so wherever you are you can access your documents. Because the Premium Edition is still in beta, it is also FREE.
  
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets - Google Docs and Spreadsheets plays a similar tone to Thinkfree. It is great for quick on the fly creation of documents. I have found limitations in its Spreadsheet tool that made totaling hours difficult. For example, as a consultant I keep track of my hours worked for people using ThinkFree Online. Well when I attempted this in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, it would not total hours in the fashion that I needed. Price = FREE.
  
• OpenOffice - OpenOffice is developed in conjunction between Sun Microsystem's and a community of volunteer developers. It is a very powerful and robust application. Having word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, illustration and math calculation software packed in, makes it a very worthy adversary to the Microsoft Office Suite. Price = FREE.
  
• Sun's StarOffice - Normally sold for $70. StarOffice is now available through Google's "Google Pack" for FREE. The only difference is that the Google Pack version has a Google search bar embedded within the application. Google's choice in using StarOffice over OpenOffice is still fully unanswered, but speculation leads to believe that it was because of a software use agreement shared between Sun & Google back in 2005. Price = FREE.
  
• Corel WordPerfect Office - Corel's WordPerfect Office suite is probably the most competitive suite to MS Office in that it is competitive packaged, priced, and marketed. It is cheaper than MS Office, but not by much. Ranging from $99 to $350, it doesn't offer much more than the free alternatives listed above. But some people just enjoy sticking with what they know, and since WordPerfect has been around nearly as long as Word if not longer, Corel has established a loyal user base. Price = $99 to $350.