There are GOOD FREE ALTERNATIVES to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Outlook 2007.  And with the new versions of Microsoft Office costing over $200, these free alternatives are much appreciated.  They download rather quickly, install easily, and have setup wizards.  Their features are very similar to those found in Microsoft products.

Email:  Mozilla’s “Thunderbird” 2.0 

This free robust email program comes from the same group who created the Firefox browser. It’s free because it’s “open source” (many volunteer developers) and underwritten by the Mozilla Foundation, which was created after the final release Netscape.

Wordprocessing:   OpenOffice.org’s  ”Writer”  

Writer looks and functions a lot like Word 2003. This is a good thing because the new ‘ribbon’ interface in later Word releases is a bit confusing. This is not a truncated basic program like Wordpad. Rather, it’s a full featured wordprocessor with all the controls and options you’ll probably need.  Click thumbnail below to see a screenshot.  http://www.openoffice.org

 You can get “Writer” separately or as part of the OpenOffice.org 3’s office software suite.  The suite includes: a fully functional Word-like word processor, Excel-like spreadsheet program, Powerpoint-like presentations program, graphics program, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages (such as Word). It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

The wordprocessor in OpenOffice can be downloaded separately. It can import .doc and .docx files. It can also save in those formats, and many others, including the ability to save your docs as PDFs.  

The OpenOffice spreadsheet program replaces Excel, and their Presentations program replaces Powerpoint. OpenOffice.org is a community of developers sponsored by Sun-Java Microsystems.