Office became the “standard” suite of office applications for good reason, and it remains an excellent product today – providing most users with far more power and features than they’ll ever need or use. But it does come at a cost – which is, ironically, the price.

The free open-source OpenOffice.org has been gaining market share over the years with their MS-Office compatible office suite. And with their recent version 3 release, they’re bound to gain even more.

There is not a compelling reason to throw out your Microsoft Office license and switch over to OpenOffice. But, if it’s time to upgrade, or to purchase a new copy of an office suite, it’s definitely time to take a serious look at OpenOffice. Most people never look back.

However, you can get Microsoft compatible applications for word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and more completely free in the OpenOffice application available at OpenOffice.org.

The latest release of OpenOffice is quite refined and is worthy office suite alternative.