What is your favorite office and productivity suite or tools? Are you still using the Microsoft Office in the old fashion way or do you work directly in the cloud? Have you ever tried other solution, other than Microsoft’s Office?
In my case there are 2 way to use Office tools: at work and home/personal. At work we still use the Office 2007 Tools and Sharepoint platform to manage files. This is quite similar with “on the cloud” system because is offers the possibility to work directly with the files from server. On the other part, for my personal stuff I use Google Drive and quite rarely LibreOffice. For example, I use google’s spreadsheet to manage and keep a statistic over my apartment spending (rent and utilities payment as well as a water/gas/electricity monthly consumption). In case of document work I use LibreOffice.
Both Google Drive and LibreOffice are free. And this is the main reason I choose this platform instead of Microsoft Office. In my personal life, i need office tools for simple and rare tasks (once a week). Therefore, paying for a home licensed office suite to keep a record of my bills I found it unnecessary.
Also, if you have a small company or you need to work for school projects or university papers you will be surprised to find that you can do it for free with quite good tools. I will make a list with my favorite Office suites…
LibreOffice is community-driven and developed software, and is a project of the not-for-profit organization, The Document Foundation. I found it simple, fast and secure (trusty while is based on European laws).
2. OpenOffice
Also and open-source project. Good compatibility with Microsoft Office, very good for students.
3. Google Drive
Modern and cloud based solution. Store up to 15GB of files and are synced between devices. May cause privacy concerns for some users.
4. FreeOffice
Developed by the german software company SoftMaker in addition to it’s commercial version. Good tools for home users and small companies that what to save costs.
5. ZOHO
Web-based suite, similar with Google Docs.
Free Suite that includes: Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheet.
7. ThinkFree
Cloud base solution, complete online productivity suite.
Free office suite from IBM based on OpenOffice.