In the spirit of the Open Source community (and to tick-off Microsoft...) Sun Micro Systems and thousands of volunteers have developed a comprehensive (and free) alternative to the ubiquitous MS Office. The latest version 3.0 of OpenOffice is now available for the Mac Platform without first having to install X11 Unix software.

Millions of people around the world are using Office for their daily productivity tasks, such as word processing, spreadsheets, databases, and presentations. Although Office is a great product with almost unlimited features, it does come at a cost... Every year, billions of dollars are spent to keep up to date with the ever increasing versions of Office.

I would argue that it is fair to say, that 90 percent of Office users only use 10 percent of the features available. OpenOffice has all the features (and more) but it is absolutely free!

What about if I want to share documents with people that use Microsoft? The latest version of OpenOffice is compatible with the latest Office file formats, so you can open and save as Office documents as needed.

So if you are on a budget download OpenOffice and try it for yourself.