We were challenged to come up with low-cost alternatives to commercial office suite products that could accomplish the same (or similar) tasks. In order to highlight free tools whenever possible, we wanted to present a sample of what is available in the land of freeware. This is not intended to be a comprehensive listing, but a starting point for further exploration. Please be sure to read notices on the individual product pages for important user information, bug reports, and warnings. NPTalk cannot assume responsibility for any use of the products listed below. StarOffice Arguably the dominant fully-featured freeware office suite is StarOffice, a commercially-developed package consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet, graphic and presentation programs; news and mail reader, event scheduler, an equation generator and an HTML editor. The current release, version 5.2, features filtering for import/export for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Java Applet and JavaScript support within the Linux version, and is available in English, German, French and Italian. The tool, however, takes forever and a day to download, as it weighs in at some 60~80 MB (think about how long that would take on a dialup 28.8 connection). More importantly, it manages to do something that has been a headache both legally and logisitcally for other companies, namely, providing a desktop office suite that works across more than one operating system. Macintosh users, do not fear: a Mac version is expected sometime in 2001. On 10/13/00 Sun Microsystems, which acquired StarOffice in August 1999, released the full source code for the latest version of the office suite-- roughly 9 million lines(!) -- to the public, through an effort called Openoffice.org. Openoffice is being done jointly with a group called CollabNet, which has helped to break up those 9 million lines into 75 program modules, grouped into 18 categories to correspond with the features of the suite. One of the biggest improvements in this release is that the suite utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) as the basic file format. Previous versions of the suite, while able to import file formats from the Corel WordPerfect and Microsoft Office suites, incorporated a proprietary file format not easily integrated with other software packages. XML will offer users a higher degree of flexibility. This release will enable developers to customize or license the entire suite or individual parts to their hearts' content. Openoffice.org will still control the open source technology. Sun, and other authorized commercial licensors, will continue to develop commercial products based on the same source code, but will also contribute any changes they make back through Openoffice.org. This means developers will, in theory, have access to the code underlying any future commercial iterations of StarOffice. This is similar to the work undertaken by netscape for its Netscape 6 browser under the Mozilla project. There has to be catch to all of this, right? Well, yes: users have to accept two license terms. The first is the GNU Public License. This means that you can download, modify, and redistribute the code, but you cannot restrict or limit redistribution by others. The second is something called the Sun Industry Standard Source License (SISSL), which states basically that developers agree to utilize application programming interfaces and compatibility testing procedures which are spelled out and approved by Sun. Why is Sun doing all of this? Sun is in competition with Microsoft for producing the next generation of desktop office suite software. Microsoft is currently attempting to develop a server-based version of the Microsoft Office suite. Sun is trying to release an Internet server-based version of StarOffice called StarPortal. Both products, ideally, would enable entities to run Internet-browser accessible office suites. If you feel overwhelmed by StarOffice from either a user or developer standpoint, there is a StarOffice Users Group Portal. Suite NewDeal for Old PCs For older PCs, namely those with 286, 386, and 486 processors running at least DOS 3.3, there is an office suite from NewDeal. NewDeal Office provide a range of word processing, spreadsheet, database, and even Web browsing functions for the 30-60 million pre-Pentium systems floating around. It consists of Skipper SE (web browser), NewWrite (word processor/desktop publishing), NewDraw (graphics), NewCalc (spreadsheet), NewMail (e-mail client), Web Editor (HTML editor), Web Chat (IRC chat client), NewBASIC (BASIC programming interface), NewFile (Lotus 1-2-3/dBase III compatible database), NeManager (file manager), and CD player. Also included are utilies such as an address book, calendar/personal schduler, communications emulator, scientific calendar, text editor, file search tool, label printing tool, and scrapbook. You will need, however, 10MB of hard disk space and 640KB of memory. All this comes in at under $70. An additional program, New Banker, for personal finance, is available as an add-on. Higher End PC, Lower Price Range Ziff-Davis collected an interesting "suite" of free Windows software. It may not be a pre-packaged unified suite, and the individual programs may not cover every feature you have with the larger commercial tools out there. You might find, however, a surprising number of features that suit your purposes. Their recommendations consist of Pegasus Mail for Windows (e-mail), RCEdit (HTML editor), Sphygmic Software Spreadsheet, Store (database), and WordTabs (word processing). Be sure to read any and all documentation for notices on bugs (or as we call them "untested" or "undocumented" features. We have included links to each software product below. 602Pro PC Suite This freeware suite consists of three programs: 602Text (word processor), 602Tab (spreadsheet) and 602Photo (graphic editor). 602Text is compatible with Microsoft Word and other major word processing formats. As an addedd bonus, you can do basic charts and diagrams as well. 602Tab can share files with Microsoft Excel, and it lets you perform basic database and data analysis functions. 602Photo is a useful tool for scanners and digital cameras, and supports GIFs and JPEG files. You will need about 15MB of hard drive space for the download. Additional tools-- including a LAN version for e-mail, Internet. and fax sharing and management and network support; file management, extended file formats; and hard drive search and indexing tools-- are availble for a fee. We also took a shot at assembling our own "free suite" from existing freeware. Word Processor Nisus Writer (Mac) Word and WordPerfect are robust and powerful word processing tools with a lot of features, a number of which can be either intimidating or seldom-used. As an alternative (and free tool) Nisus Writer offers a cost-effective set of word processing functions. There are two versions. The compact version, featuring the program and dictionary/thesaurus, saves files as text, includes basic search/replace, integration of graphics files, and file indexing. The full version adds support for WorldScript (assuming you have the Language Key and Kits installed), enabling support for English, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, and other language modules. In addition, it features the ability to integrate multimedia content, style sheets, indexing, macro and keyboard shortcut support, tables, file indexing, unlimited undo, The downside is that the free Nisus Writer, by itself, cannot easily import Word or WordPerfect documents. If you are running MacLinkPlus, however, it can be used to convert documents for use in Nisus. Spreadsheet Spread32 (PC) Okay, we'll confess that we still have absolutely no clue what most of the functions on Excel, Lotus 123, Quattro Pro, or other spreadsheets are supposed to do. But, they do some really nice charts and graphs, and when you have done your first pivot table, oh are you in for a treat. But if you don't feel like slogging through 400-page manuals to develop a table or graph, and more importantly, you want to do it for free, you might want to try Bye Design's Spread32 for Windows 95/98/NT. (There is a completely free version with all features intact. There is also a licensed version for $20 which entitles you to free upgrades as they are released. Download versions are available for English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. The current version is a marked improvement over earlier versions, which themselves were impressive. First, it takes up hardly any room on your hard drive. Each individual workbook file can hold 256 columns by 65536 rows across 255 worksheets. Trust us, it is a lot of space for number crunching. You get a decent range of table, cell, and text editing and formatting tools. Spread32 can also import and export files into Excel 95/97 and standard CSV format. The charts are not hig-end, but they do a better job of explaining numbers than we ever could here. Not only are there the usual myriad list of formulas and arithmetic expressions to plug in, there is also around 300 special functions you can insert into worksheets and formulas, covering database, engineering, financial, information, logical, math and trigonometric, statistical, and text functions. Functions can be created using up to 255 characters. Database Ezy Data (Windows 3.1/95/98/NT/2000/ME) Ezy Data lets you make relational databases and import data from other spreadsheet and database programs. You have control over tables, fields, field properties, relationships, and indexes. A built-in query wizard helps you set up and save pre-defined queries, and a data definition wizard will document your database. Database repair and sample templates are included. It also can import and export files for use by most versions of Microsoft Access. Presentations Mediator (PC) This free tool lets you create your own multimedia presentations from scratch or through templates. A wide range of file formats, including sound, media, video, and graphics. Sophisticated transitions between slides can be set to be triggered by mouse click, time delay, or keyboard strokes. Presentations can also be saved to disk, played on the web, or distributed via e-mail or CD-ROM/floppy.