If you own more than one computer, buying or upgrading Microsoft Office can be a real expense. Indeed, own a Mac laptop and a Windows desktop machine, and you have to fork out for two different editions. There must be an alternative. There are many different commercial and free alternatives, including the recent multi-platform Lotus Symphony, which is currently at beta 2. You could use this across both Windows and Mac OS X, keeping the same user-interface and familiarity, whilst reading and writing to Microsoft Office documents.

Computeractive issue 254 is now on-sale and includes a free full commercial version of Ashampoo Office 2006. This is is a full commercial office suite and is Microsoft Office compatible. It consists of a word processor and spreadsheet and certainly is worth considering, particularly as it's free for Computeractive readers.

21 Nov 2007