If You Are Looking For A Good, Free Desktop Office Suite

I've been using WPS (aka Kingsoft) office suite for years now. I think it provides the most faithful renderings of MS docs and spreadsheets (I don't use powerpoint so wouldn't know its accuracy). Accuracy aside, it's also light and fast - esp. if you compare to the positively slow and lumbering Libreoffice (yes, even v7.x). But these last few years, WPS has been moving towards the subscription model while adding "cloud stuff"; and worse, hobbling the free version with ads and sometimes even watermarks! So... if (like me) you are just interested in the traditional desktop office suite (word, calc, powerpoint and absolutely nothing else) - you can still download an older version** that fits the bill (after just a bit of mods):

1. Download WPS 10.2 (verified 'clean' with VirusTotal)
2. Install as normal
3. Open 'Task Manager' and terminate WPS process running in background
4. Open 'Win Explorer' to where WPS is installed:
a. Keep the "app" folder itself (i.e. folder 10.2.0.6080), along with its subfolders
b. Delete all other folders (to kill the cloud, ads, and sharing stuff)
c. Now within the "app" folder - delete all .exe files except for: et.exe, wps.exe and wpp.exe
d. Still within the "app" folder - go to subfolder "office6\cfgs\" and open the file "product.dat"
5. Open up file "product.dat" with any text editor (e.g. notepad.exe)
a. delete all contents - everything
b. copy and paste these four lines exactly and save/overwrite to "product.dat":
[Support]
M35kV8i4rK2syVKaEkgUOg..=WHfH10HHgeQrW2N48LfXrA..
aOaC6Lht18RYqHEm2-ssQA..=WHfH10HHgeQrW2N48LfXrA..
o2M63f-lco81CWC-ztbcTTHO6tfvnsYnawGJYbZt1LYcOHIED-mqrKy92s8wjCGS=WHfH10HHgeQrW2N48LfXrA..

That's it. You now have a great, traditional, standalone WPS office suite. WPS also has an excellent and free Android app. They very likely have one for iPhone too, but don't know for sure. Enjoy.

** Actually, you can also download whichever latest versions and go through the same steps above. However, step 5b requires experimenting. The specific lines to paste back will differ. I don't bother with anything after version 10 because the newer versions 11.x just mean even more cloud, collaboration stuff and ads to remove - plus I dislike intensely their flat, monochrome ribbon - perferring to stay with v10.2 instead.

 

Among LO, OO, Softmaker (SM)... I like SM the most, by far. LO and OO are just clunky and s-l-o-w -- not to mention their butt ugly toolbars/ribbons. LO's ribbons are still just half baked, more than a decade behind SM, WPS, MS...

I like both Softmaker and WPS. WPS works better for me because (1) I can easily navigate around using my touch screen whereas with SM, I have to touch and slide the vertical or horizontal scroll bars specifically... and (2) WPS allows for ribbon customization. I like having all my most-used items reside on one ribbon tab, rather than spread out over different ones as dictated by SM. Of course, both of these are "niceties" and not critical advantages. SM is still pretty darn good. And SM doesn't advertise or nudge users toward subsciption - unlike WPS - which is what prompted this thread.

 

There have been some barely believable offers on MS Ofiice over the past year or so. In Jan 22 I got two copies of Office Professional 21 for £44 from gHacks and there have been numerous similar offers since. I'm sure these free alternatives are very capable but when you can get the real thing at these prices you just can't ignore it. My two copies are registered on my MS account and have been just fine.

 

Yebo!
And I still use MSO 2007 Enterprise in Win7.

And MSO 2003 Professional in WinXP.

And no... There is no security risk.

 

Hopefully I didn't start an 'office' war inadvertently!

 

Day dreaming again Tim?