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

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