We complain about the cost of purchasing a multi-seat commercial license for key software, but then we're often guilty of going out and buying the market-leading tool, when there are a range of cheaper and free alternatives. In addition to the forthcoming OpenOffice 3, IBM recently released the first version of the free Lotus Symphony, which contains a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool.
Lotus Symphony 1.1 is now available and it ships with a smaller memory footprint, as well as a few new features. You can quickly and easily open or save in the Microsoft Office format, as well as the ODF (Open Document Format), enabling compatibility across office suites. Better still, there's a version for both Windows and Linux, so you can use it across alternative operating systems (a Mac version is not yet available, however).
Lotus Symphony link.
30 Aug 2008
