ms office freeware

I see MS is offering some office tools freeware, like OfficeSuite, if I'm understanding it correctly. Has anybody tried this yet? Is it pretty much the same thing as the very expensive purchased product? Is it truly compatible with the real thing?

 

You're not understanding it correctly. MS is not offering some office tools freeware, if, by "office tools", you mean MS Office, or even MS Works.

However, OpenOffice is a freeware alternative to MS Office. And, it's compatible with MS Office up through Office 2003. And, I understand a forthcoming version of OpenOffice will be compatible with MS Office 2007. OpenOffice is not a Microsoft product.

 

MS does offer some free tools to be used with Office if you already have it installed. The tools don't work without MS Office, nor do they work with OpenOffice. However, OpenOffice is an EXCELLENT application. It fully supports Office documents including PowerPoint and Excel. There are two versions, both are free and open source:
OpenOffice.org (127 mb) http://www.majorgeeks.com/OpenOffice.org_For_Windows_d3461.html
OxygenOffice Professional (214mb) http://www.majorgeeks.com/OxygenOffice_Professional_d5340.html

 

Thanks for the info. I have tried OO, and it doesn't seem to work with Vista. It installs an icon, but I never get the actual program, just the option to keep on installing it. I'll keep on looking for somthing that is compatible with Vista and MS as well.

 

It is compatible. Make sure you are installing java, too.

 

Thanks much for the help!