10 Free Alternatives of Microsoft Office Word!

Over the years, Microsoft Office Word has been the best and most advanced Word processing application. However, the cost of Microsoft word can be extremely high and the small businesses may feel it as a burden. So, I’m listing the free alternatives of Microsoft Word, so that you may use it for your business or for your personal use :-

Offline Alternatives of Microsoft Office Word :

ooowriter 1. OpenOffice.org Writer : This open source software package is an overall alternative to Microsoft Office. OOo Writer is perfect replacement of Microsoft word. Bruce Byfield has done an extensive comparison between the two programs and I’m sure you’ll see that OOo Writer is no less than MS Word.

abiword 2. AbiWord : AbiWord is similar to MS Word and MS Word users will not find much problem in switching over to this free application and will certainly love it as there is nothing better than a powerful and free word processor.

3. QJot : This particular software is not as powerful as OOo Writer and AbiWord but it’s a light weight replacement of MS word. It allows you to edit the DOC files and that’s what puts it in the list of the alternatives.

4. Jarte : Jarte is another replacement of MS Word but only because it lets you edit the word files. It’s very strange looking and I would say that you won’t like this one at all, it’s user interface is one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.

I’ll say that only OOo Writer and AbiWord are the real alternatives to MS Word and because both of those software are available for Linux and Windows alike, so you’ll find them as the perfect solution and alternative to MS Word.

Online Alternatives of Microsoft Word (everyone of them is in beta):

zoho1. Zoho Writer : The perfect alternative of MS Word when you talk about online word processor. It doesn’t have the features of complete MS Word but it gives you more than what a desktop based word processor can’t give you and that will be Collaboration with other users. It’s still in beta so you can expect some serious features in short time.

thinkfree 2. ThinkFree Writer : ThinkFree offers both online and offline versions but it’s the online one which is free. It is also a powerful online word processor and is no less than Zoho writer. It also offers collaboration and that’s what puts it at par with desktop based word processors. Again like Zoho writer, its short of features as compared to desktop based word processors but I think that most of you will do without those features.

google 3. Google Docs : This offering from Google isn’t the best at this point of time but you can’t say anything when we are talking about Google. They are the number 1 brand and everyone know why, because they are known for building great web applications. Don’t forget to check this one out.

Well, I use Zoho, Google docs and ThinkFree the most. So I’ve written what I personally feel about them. However, there are many other online MS Word processor. So, I’m just listing them with the description given by their creators.

ajaxwrite 4. Ajax Write : ajaxWrite is a web-based word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word and other standard document formats. Anytime you need to open, read or write a word processor file, simply point your FireFox browser to www.ajaxwrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be available for you to open, edit, print and save.

buzzword 5. Buzzword : I’d recommend you give it a good try as soon as it is available, there really isn’t a learning curve if you are using word processing apps already. I’m looking forward to seeing how Buzzword develops. If they nail those integration tasks then it will definitely become part of my bookmarks toolbar for creating and editing documents for myself or to share with colleagues. Review & opinion by Richard.

goffice 6. gOffice : No it’s not by Google but by SilverOffice Inc. Here’s what manino has to say about this MS Word alternative – ” gOffice has word processing, DTP, presentations and spreadsheets. Of course, all of them have to be very simple, which is good for 80% of the population – the rest can very well shell out $500 for their own indesign or whatever.”

Source: http://www.reviewsaurus.com/online-office/offline-online-microsoft-word-alternatives