And Now For The Good News!

After last month's article about keeping software legal, I thought it would be good to show business owners a way to keep it legal AND keep the budget under control. With MS Office going for $500 or more, finding a legal FREE alternative seems like a good idea. I have included links to all of the sites mentioned in the article.

Did you ever see one of those TV shows where the guy always says “I've got some good news and some bad news?” Well, last month's article on keeping your software legal was the bad news. If you use pirated software, you run the risk of fines of $150,000 or more. This month's column is the good news. If you don't mind doing a little searching and taking some time for trial and error, you can equip your business with a wide variety of free software and it's all perfectly legal. The Internet is loaded with free software for all sorts of purposes. Here are a few sites you might want to look at.

If you are tired of paying $500 for Microsoft Office, you might consider one of the free alternatives that are available. The most popular of these is OpenOffice. OpenOffice is a free office suite which provides a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics and drawing program. It does not have as many features as MS Office and does not have a database, but does provide everything most people need for general business documents and can read and write in Office 97/2000 formats. I have been using it for several months on my home PC (including writing this column) and have been generally pleased. OpenOffice can be freely downloaded from www.openoffice.org.

Another free alternative to MS Office is available from a web site called Software602.com. They offer a product called 602 PC Suite, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and graphics/photo-editing program. This program offers the advantage of a small download file (16 MB) and a very compact installation of only 14 MB, so you should be able to run it easily on older PCs. If you like this program but need more features, they offer a Plus version for $29.95.

Here are a few other freebies I have found that might be helpful:

These are just a few examples. If you want to find thousands of others, simply enter “free software” into any search engine. You'll be amazed what you will find.

Of course, every silver lining has a cloud. Since you are getting all this stuff for free, don't expect to get free technical support for it. Providing support costs money and companies can't afford to give away the software and then support it for free. However, many of these companies offer extensive on-line support on their web sites.

Free software is not the best solution for every business. If you are the type of user that needs to be able to pick up the phone and call someone when you have a question, you may be better off with traditional shrink-wrapped software. However, even with this type of software, phone support is rarely free anymore. For example, Microsoft charges $35 for a tech support call for MS Word. But if you are willing to break from tradition and take a chance, you might find that your business can save a lot of money by using free software.

Here are a few more links to sites that might provide you with some good free stuff: