OpenOffice 3.0 is already here, at least in beta version. The most popular alternative to the almighty Microsoft suite has released its first public beta to allow users to provide feedback and help fine-tune the final product. So here's our two cents.

First, though the OpenOffice site displays a warning about possible instability issues in this beta, fear them not. The complete suite was perfectly stable during our tests, with all its applications running as smoothly as expected. This new OpenOffice is compatible with all file formats from Microsoft Office, including the latest docx, xlsx, pptx and so on from Office 2008.

All OpenOffice tools, along with your more recent documents, are easily accessible from a launcher ("Start Centre") with freshly designed icons, which is one of the main new features in this version. The launcher includes a handy template manager as well, though it's quite empty at the moment.

The suite's applications met our expectations in every aspect: they're easy to use (especially if you're used to working with Microsoft's suite) and feature all the necessary tools to create complete documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases. I particularly liked the wizard-style interface in Impress (the "Power-Point" app) which enables you to create presentations in no time.

OpenOffice 3.0 left a very good taste in our mouths. In spite of being labeled as Beta, the whole suite works perfectly fine and enables you to enjoy all of its new features right now.

Download OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC 3 in Softonic

Google Docs has to be one of Google's greatest innovations in recent times making it easier than ever to share documents and not mess around sending attachments all the time.

Ok, it's still not as good as using an Office suite (and still lacks a decent Powerpoint equivalent) but it's immensely useful in a variety of situations. gDocsBar is a sidebar extension for Firefox that makes your Google Documents closer than ever. Rather than having to access the Google Docs site, you can simply access your documents via a sidebar.

gDocsBar allows you to even drag and drop multiple files and documents into the sidebar to upload. So, if you need to work on a Word document while on the move, just drag it into the gDocsBar sidebar and you'll be able to edit it online. In addition, you can also search and filter documents from the sidebar. It also includes some snazzy templates, webclips and smart folders. Of course, this requires access to your Google Account and there's no guarantee that gDocsBar doesn't store that data although the developers assure that it's totally secure using SSL.

If you are constantly on the move and need to access your documents anytime anywhere, the gDocsBar is definitely worth a look.

Download gDocsBar 0.5.7 in Softonic

OpenOffice.org is both an open-source product and a project. The product is a multiplatform office productivity suite. It includes desktop applications such as a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation manager, and a drawing program, with a user interface and feature set similar to those of other office suites. OpenOffice.org also works transparently with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office.

Localizations of OpenOffice.org are available in 27 languages, with more being constantly added by the community. OpenOffice.org runs on Solaris, Linux (including PPC Linux), and Windows. Written in C++ and with documented APIs licensed under the LGPL and SISSL open-source protocols, OpenOffice.org allows any knowledgeable developer to benefit from the source.

Download OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 in Softonic

Portable OpenOffice.org allows you to carry an entire office suite -- word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, drawing, etc. -- with you on an iPod, USB thumbdrive, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it right into any Windows computer and use it just like you would on your own.

Portable OpenOffice.org is a repackaged version of OpenOffice.org designed with portability in mind. It works just like regular OpenOffice.org installed on your computer does, except it allows you to use it on any Windows computer without installing anything. It has all the features of the excellent OpenOffice.org office suite except for the Data application. It also includes some special enhancements to make it work even better from your portable drive.

Download Portable OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 in Softonic

The productivity suite market is generally dominated by two main options: you either use the proprietary Microsoft Office suite or its open source alternative, Open Office. But if you don't like any of them, I'm glad to inform you there's a third choice.

Kingsoft Office is a fully featured, completely free office suite you can use for your daily work tasks. It includes three main applications: Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets, to create DOC, PPT and XLS files respectively. The three of them are installed and launched separately – unlike Lotus Symphony, which uses a common interface. There are no apps for databases, email, or web publications.

I must admit these three apps are almost identical to their Microsoft Office equivalents, so identical in fact I'm beginning to wonder if it's just a copy. Whatever the Kingsoft developers thought about when creating the suite, I'm happy to be able to use a complete suite without having to pay for it. Also, the fact that it's so similar to other suites you may have been using up to know makes the learning curve practically non-existent.

Kingsoft includes interesting options such as the ability to export any document to PDF format and support for document encryption. On the downside, the suite felt a bit unstable during our tests: the Spreadsheets app, for example, crashed on one of our machines but worked perfectly well on a different one.

In any case, Kingsoft Office 2007 is a great free alternative for productivity suite users who don’t want to tie themselves to the same old choices.

Download Kingsoft Office 2007 6.3.0.1371 in Softonic

Whenever I hear the word "Pro" and "Microsoft" in the same package, I get inherently nervous because it's often nothing more than a few add-ons for hundreds of dollars more.

The first thing to warn you about is upgrading from Office 2007 with this package. You are almost certainly going to experience a myriad of upgrade problems, compatibility issues and goodness knows what else. certainly. Note that you'll certainly need a considerable amount of time to adjust to upgrading to this new version of Office although those used to the Classic version will probably have least problem and for the cost of the upgrade, it's debatable whether it actually increases productivity or speed of use at all. The ribbons in particular are still cluttered, poorly organised and occupy too much of the desktop. In addition, there's not much added functionality although they have manged to make sure that the ‘saved’ file sizes are smaller. I really can't see much reason in upgrading from Office 2003 based on this very frustrating version of 2007 but if you really do enjoy constant technical hiccups and error messages, then go ahead.

This is one Microsoft upgrade to definitely avoid although the one advantage is that saved file sizes are smaller.

Download Microsoft Office Professional 2007 Beta 2 in Softonic

In the beginning was Microsoft Office. Then OpenOffice appeared as an open-source alternative. And now IBM makes a new move and offers its own productivity suite, all free of charge. The idea is not new: there have been a few free suites launched lately, but all of them were online. IBM Lotus Symphony is the only desktop suite that, together with OpenOffice, can offer a free alternative to Microsoft's proprietary apps.

IBM Lotus Symphony offers three tools: word processor, spreadsheet and presentations. It's true that other productivity suites are usually more complete. However, Lotus Symphony stands out for a convenient, single-windowed interface from which you can launch the three apps. Simply click on the "Open" button and select the kind of document you want to open: the program's toolbar will change accordingly. What's more, you can have as many opened documents as you want at the same time, no matter which type, and switch between them in the top tab bar.

The suite includes all the basic tools that you could expect in such an application: spell checker and tables for documents, predesigned templates for presentations and charts for spreadsheets - to name a few - besides the usual configuration options as regards fonts, colors and the like.

In my personal opinion, I'm glad to have another possibility to choose from when deciding which suite I'm going to use. A little rivalry is always good and usually produces better and wider options for computer users. And it seems IBM is beginning to take the suite competition quite seriously.

IBM Lotus Symphony has left the beta stage behind and now offers a stable, highly functional productivity suite that, despite not being as complete as other suites, may perfectly fit your needs.

Download IBM Lotus Symphony 1.0 in Softonic

If you're on the open source side you'll probably be using Open Office instead of Microsoft Office. But did you know there is more than one version of Open Office?

Go-OO (that is, Go-Open Office) is a fork of Open Office, that is, a special version or development build that features some interesting improvements regarding the suite it's based on. Among these improvements you can find support for OpenXML and Microsoft Works files, an optimized Microsoft binary file support, and perfect import of Wordperfect graphics, among others. You can also work with Excel VBA macros and Visio diagrams.

Other than that, Go-OO is visually identical to the original Open Office suite and includes exactly the same apps, namely Writer, Calc, Math, Impress, Draw and Base.

If you need the specific improvements included in this special version of Open Office, give it a try; if not, you may as well download the official version because there's not that much difference.

Download Go-OO 2.4 in Softonic

Microsoft has added new file formats to the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to reduce file size, improve reliability, and enhance integration with external sources.

To help ensure that you can exchange documents between Microsoft Office releases, Microsoft has developed a Compatibility Pack for the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. By installing the Compatibility Pack (Beta 2 Technical Refresh) alongside Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, save, and create files using the robust file formats new to the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

Download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack 2007 Beta in Softonic

Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program used to manipulate and analyze numeric data. Gnumeric can help you keep track of information in lists, organize numeric values in columns and rows, perform and update complex calculations by defining each step of the calculation and modifying particular steps subsequently, create and display or print graphical plots of data using bar plots, line graphs, pie charts or radar charts, implement complex optimization modeling or perform many other tasks involving numbers, dates, times, names or other data.

Download Gnumeric 1.9.1 in Softonic

OxygenOffice Professional is an office suite completely based on the famous open source package OpenOffice, but with more templates, cliparts, samples and fonts. All six applications included in OpenOffice are present, but if you click on File, New, Templates and Documents, you’ll find ten categories to choose from with dozens of pre-formatted documents, so you can save time and have more eye-catching works in minutes.

The categories go from Business Correspondence to Presentation and Education. In each one you can find templates for different type of files, like spreadsheet, presentation, andwriting documents.

Although it’s appreciable the effort of providing more materials to work with, OxygenOffice doesn’t add that much to OpenOffice. Having aimed to be more graphically efficient, the program could have improved the general GUI of the Open Office application. In this case it would have been a real plus and people would have had more reason to use it.

OxygenOffice offers many templates and cliparts for you to be more creative while creating personal or professional documents. It would have been nice if the program had improved the GUI also to differentiate the package from OpenOffice though.

Download OxygenOffice Professional 2.4 in Softonic

Although it is true that standalone computers are always more powerful, it is also true that for portable devices, the need for light applications is always strong. If the portable device were to be a USB pen drive this need is even greater.

In modern life, its useful to have all our document, photos, videos and contacts with us all the timeIts nice to feel free to send a document we have just created at any moment if we need to. The release of very thin and hybrid devices, notebooks with a very small screen try to answer to this need and this life style change. So far though, these devices are not that powerful and they don't have so much storage space. Having a tiny application then is still important and this is why this set of programs may come inhandy.

Tiny USB Office allows you to create text file, export them topdf, use a basic MSN Instant Messaging service, and create spreadsheets. Do not think you can open and modify your doc or xls files though. The application, at least for the latest file uses a proprietary format not compatible with Excel, despite what the developer says. I've actually tried creating simple excel files and the Tiny USB Office couldn't open them. The utility is of course reduced, but you might find useful to have a little office of just 2.3Mb, always available on your USB drive.

The idea of a portable office is great, but I would have allowed compatibility with MS Office; if not the portability is zero and the utility greatly reduced.

Download Tiny USB Office 1.0 in Softonic

There are many reasons you might want to use Microsoft Office Word Viewer: perhaps you need to check a document on a public computer or maybe you've been sent a Word document but don't have time to install Microsoft Office in its entirety. Whatever your reason, if you need to view or print any Microsoft Word document quickly, this tool could prove to be a real lifesaver.

After a simple install process, run the app and you're presented with an Open File dialog window. Remember: you can't create, change or save any document in Word Viewer. Select your chosen file (the viewer supports .docx files via a converter, as well as older .doc and other formats).

Upon opening your document, you'll see that it displays just as it would in Microsoft Word, only without any of the editing tools. This means that you can see editorial notes and changes, if they have been tracked on the document. Additionally, you may access the file's properties window which will display statistics and authorship information, along with other details.

While you cannot export or save any document from Word Viewer, you do have two options for obtaining a copy of the text. You may either print the document (which works just as well as printing from the full version of Word), and you're also allowed to copy the text and paste it into another application.

In all, Microsoft Office Word Viewer is a small and useful application. While it has no editing functions, it lets you read documents from any version of Microsoft Word with ease.

Download Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003 1.2 in Softonic

ASAP Utilities contains over 300 useful and powerful utilities to fill the gaps in Excel, and automate frequently used tasks. Here are just a few of the tools that you will find in this program:

A few of ASAP's popular tools:

• Deselect cells
• Apply formula to selected range
• Conditional select cells (i.e. cells > 12 or red cells)
• Copy a worksheet's page and print settings
• Vision control, view workbooks, sheets and easily change their settings
• Print multiple sheets
• Color each n'th row or column
• File import and export (txt, csv, dbf, xls, gif, jpg, etc.)
• Export selection as HTML table (including formats, colors etc.)

Download ASAP Utilities 4.2.1 in Softonic

Floppy Office is a collection of small, self contained no-install free office software applications which enable the end use access to every tool, utility and program imaginable for home, business, and student users alike.

All of the self-contained, standalone applications require no installation, whatsoever, and for this reason make the perfect companion software package for your USB stick. All one needs to do is to extract all the zip files containing each application to their USB, configure them to their liking, and they are all set.

The applications included in this bundle are: an encryption program, a zip utility, an FTP client, a multiple document interface Rich Text editor, a notepad-style editor, secure file shredder, full POP email client, web server for hosting files via http, a mini tree-style outliner, vector graphics editor, a spreadsheet program compatible with Microsoft Excel, file renaming utility, and a PDF creator. Since these applications are so small, you may be wondering if these are all console applications. The answer is no — they all have a conventional, intuitive, graphic user interface.

Given the fact that Floppy Office is so small in size, this is definitely a software bundle worth having on your USB, or keeping around for a rainy day. It is the perfect portable office solution for anyone who is on the road a lot, or who finds themselves working on different PCs.

Download Floppy Office 3.8 in Softonic

Business Functions is a free function library for Microsoft Excel designed to make business plans, budgets, structured financings and cashflows.

It's based on the principle that using a purpose-built function in a cell is more transparent, reliable, flexible and accurate than an overly long Excel formula.

This principle has been extended to a comprehensive projections functions that project cashflows and accruals with a high degree of daycount accuracy.

Up to 500 or so functions in C++ do the dirty work of projecting costs and revenues, coping with time periods, growth etc.

Download Business Functions 1.44 in Softonic

Revolver Mail combines all the elements of a personal information manager - an email client, an address book, and a calendar - in a single, integrated, user-friendly interface. Even better: it´s free. Revolver Mail is the safe, network-savvy alternative to existing email programs.

Designed especially for use in SOHO and small business environments, Revolver Mail´s secure framework and virus-resistant email area makes it a great choice for both company data and personal information.

Safety First

- Virus-resistant Inbox
- Attachments like vbscripts, ActiveX controls , etc., are neutralized.
- Informatio is stored in a fully-encoded data trunk
- Detailed user-rights controls put you in control
- Fully automated backups
Advantage: Built secure from the ground up.

Integrated Interface

Revolver integrates a suite of programs into a seamless application. Everything is interconnected, so you gain efficiency and avoid redundancy.
Advantage: Your world, in one window.

Very User-Friendly

Thanks to its single-window-design, Revolver is as easy to handle as an internet browser. Start organizing your life after only a few minutes.
Advantage: Simple to use.

Very fast

By the time you have typed in the first few letters of your serach term, Revolver Mail has retrieved a list of results; with every stroke of a key, Revolver refines the list.
Advantage: Less search, more found.

Network-Savvy

It may be the star of the lineup, but Revolver Mail is a team player. Up to 100 users can work at the same time with the same data, whether they´re connecting from a Mac or a PC. No expensive server software needed. Connect all of your users in about 5 minutes.
Advantage: Teamwork now means less work.

Download Revolver Mail 2006.2.6 in Softonic

With Excel Viewer 2003, you can open, view, and print Excel workbooks, even if you don't have Excel installed. You can also copy data from Excel Viewer 2003 to another program. However, you cannot edit data, save a workbook, or create a new workbook. This download is a replacement for Excel Viewer 97 and all previous Excel Viewer versions.

Download Microsoft Excel Viewer 2003 1.0 in Softonic

Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, the current version of this popular add-on for Microsoft PowerPoint, can help you easily capture, synchronize, and publish audio, video, slides, and images. It's the ideal tool for creating engaging presentations, training, and business communications.

Whether you're a content professional, media professional, or information worker, with Producer 2003 you can create dynamic presentations and training cost-effectively. At the same time, you can increase comprehension and the number of people you reach. Producer 2003 addresses a wide variety of communications scenarios by making it easy to work with audio and video. Use it to:

Develop training content

Content providers, media departments, or training groups can create on-demand content that engages users and complies with eLearning standards developed by Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Global Learning Consortium, Inc. and the U.S. Department of Defense Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

Generate high-quality online presentations

Companies of all sizes can create rich-media presentations that can help them meet important business goals, such as introducing a new product.

Create informal business communications

Business professionals can use Producer 2003 to create informal, yet effective presentations, such as an audio description of quarterly results.

Produce on-demand executive broadcasts

Capture the audio and video of a live broadcast and then use Producer 2003 to integrate slides and other related elements. Then, post your presentation for on-demand viewing.

Archive departmental meetings

Workgroups can use Producer 2003 to capture meetings, quickly add entries to the table of contents, and then post the indexed content for others to access from their computers.

Index archived videotapes

Take existing video training content, synchronize it with PowerPoint slides, and then publish your updated content to the corporate network to reach users in a cost-effective and engaging way.

Download Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2003 2.0 in Softonic

Office XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP3 contains significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements. This service pack applies to any level of Office XP. It contains all updates included in Office XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), and updates released after SP2.

Download Office XP Service Pack 3 (SP-3) in Softonic