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Dear Sree,
I have a recommendation. A friend of mine who is majoring in computer science recently turned me on to OpenOffice.org. It is a free office suite by Sun Microsystems meant to compete with Microsoft Office. It has a word processor and spreadsheet, presentation and database software that effectively compete with their equivalents in Office. It is Mac and PC compatible and will open most other types of word processing software files. It will also work with any e-mail program automatically attaching the file you are working on to the message. It is also available in multiple languages, can be downloaded for free at Openoffice.org or a cd ordered at the website for a nominal cost.

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I have been using the word processing software for about a week and so far, I am impressed.

It does nearly everything the full Microsoft Word does without having to use the disk for some extra features or to update. That in particular is a good thing since my disk is missing. OpenOffice.org will allow you to save a file as word document or rich text format so those with other brands of word processing software can still open your documents.

As far as I can tell there is no grammar check, but Word's is only so-so in my opinion so I don't think most will miss that feature. Also, some of the spacing can seem a little off even though it is not. However, since its code is open, a wide range of folks are working to make it ever better.

I recently worked at a small newspaper that was struggling to stay afloat. The newsroom, of course, was the last to get new software and as a result was still using Word 5.0. Using such old software created a whole host of problems and it would have been great if we could have used this software. I'm sure the budget gods and our tech guy would have approved.

OpenOffice.org is being recommended especially for small businesses and non-profits who can't afford the hefty price tag of Office. I think many journalists, such as freelancers working from home and those working at papers with dinosaur software would find this a good option.

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