Apache OpenOffice

I normally use WordPerfect, but many colleagues use MS Word. OpenOffice gives me interoperability.

It's perfectly suited for small bussinesses like mine that only need basic functionality out of an office suite. You can do almost everything you would do with MS Office but for free. Very good if you need to redact documents that will be printed or saved as a PDF only.

I'd say it's not great if you need to share documents with other people who use MS Office, like most do, because although it can save in MS Office formats, they are older versions, so you can't open files created in the new versions.

OOO is excellent for personal use or small businesses which cannot afford a Microsoft Office license. With it, you can expect high compatibility between MSO and other office suites, as well as an intuitive menu system that borrows many attributes from more widely-known office suites (particularly MS-Office).

It is a large installation, and leans heavily on JRE (Java Runtime Environment), which explains its high compatibility. Unfortunately that also means it is not optimized for the devices on which it runs, and you will find slower load/save/document conversion/export times compared to other office suites.

But the price wins. You can't compare it to others.

Apache OpenOffice is one good alternative to Microsoft Office when it comes to working with text documents, spreadsheets and presentations offline. It provides most features that MSO has but all that will not cost you anything. In addition, it runs on all platforms not only on Windows.

However, for online collaboration and browser support, you should take a serious look at Google Docs.

It is free to use, and where we have temp or volunteer workers, we can use this without worrying about subscription costs while providing a platform for work to still get done.