Alternatives to Microsoft Office - Comments Page 2

I'd like to throw in a word for Atlantis, an inexpensive and slim word processor. I found it by accident years ago, when I found MS Word and others much too cumbersome and too obese for my little 300 Dollar netbook. I do all my consultations and notes on a little net book that I carry around on rounds. Some I print out, some I load directly into the hospital's EMR. It has worked very well for me for years. It has great "Autotext" and templating features. (I have zero commercial connection)
Chrisinguam

I notice that none of these supposed alternatives include a substitute for Outlook - the email part.

For years I was a Wordperfect user as it was (and possibly still is) way ahead of MS-Word in the usability stakes. Unfortunately, it was let down by the other products in the suite.

MSO's cheap 3-PC Student & Teacher versions also made it very attractive financially. On the computers at home that don't have MSO Student & Teacher I now install Libre Office, although I'm currently building a Win98SE PC (old Pioneer All-in-1) to play a bunch a games that will just not run under WinXP/7/8, even in VMs and I am installing Wordperfect 6.0 for DOS on this machine, just for "ol times sake", it being classed as the last great DOS program.

Speaking of the kind folks at MS office. On 9-11
(of course) MS did an automatic update on my 1 yr
old HP computer 7i 3rd gen. On 9-12 it activated
the 1-10 updates. I didn't pay any attention as I was just reading email. In the afternoon I needed to get into one of my files--MS killed my Excel
starter and replaced it with a "lock" and requires
me to purchase MS Office 365.($100/yr or $10/mo or
buy outright for $200 or $300. I get one free month and then must acquiesce or die. TY MS I hope y'all(SP?) get a bad case DS.

I use MS Office at work and on my work laptop, but LibreOffice on my home desktop. So I constantly open my main spreadsheet in both. BUT LibreOffice has issues. I sometimes find that where I add fields or rows in the middle of a formula range, the formula does not extend the range. Very dodgy when it's financials and I don't spot it early. Can take quite a bit of work to fix too, if there are dependencies

Thanks! Found your just-in-time article via PC Pitstop. I was just beginning to look for a "Free" MS Word compatible Word Processor... I've been using MS Works forever but... well... let's just say I'm having issues and it's time to move on. Keep Up The Great Work! ~ john b.

SoftMaker Office does include an email client, but only in the Professional version, not in the Free or even in the Standard version.

Crankcase: I notice that none of these supposed alternatives include a substitute for Outlook - the email part.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Thunderbird for desktop email, Gmail for webmail.