SoftMaker Office 2008 (previously shareware) has been supplanted by the 2010 version and SoftMaker have now made the 2008 office suite permanently available free for everyone.
The SoftMaker office 2008 suite includes a Microsoft Word compatible word processor, a Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheet plus a 'Presentations' component which allows access to PowerPoint files.
The program runs on all Windows from XP up (and Linux) and is a 59MB download.
[i:3ung6nb8]* The Microsoft Word compatible word processor that's so easy to use that you'll begin to wonder why you struggled with Microsoft Word for so long.
* The Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheet that opens and saves all your Excel workbooks and comes with many time-saving functions.
* The presentation-graphics program that not only lets you access all your PowerPoint files, but also makes your life easier with many additional features.[/i:3ung6nb8]
SoftMaker Office 2008 can be downloaded free from [url=http://www.softmakeroffice.com/:3ung6nb8]HERE[/url:3ung6nb8].
Hey Jim,
Got the email about this as I got SoftMaker Office 2008 through their last Christams offer.
Tried it out on my old laptop as it's a smaller install than MS Office. It didn't feel much lighter or faster than the respective MS programs, but here's a strange thing when I used SoftMaker with an existing .xls file:
1. it complained about the width of a couple of columns, and
2. more importantly, after I'd made a couple of minor changes to the file and saved it (as .xls and as their native format), the file ended up as twice the size of the original one.
I'm not sure if that happened because it was an existing MS .xls file, but it sure didn't look very encouraging.
Haven't tested the whole suite yet, so can't say how it behaves with other file types.
Cheers
I am human
Have never tried SoftMaker Office myself FD, I've always been lucky enough to have a recent copy of MS Office on hand; so can't really make any assessments.
SoftMaker do stress the compatibility with MS's products but, as with most things, I guess 100% compatibility would be difficult to achieve.
Anyway, it could be a nice alternative for those who cannot afford MS's expensive software.
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