5 Microsoft Office Alternatives

Want to try new productivity suites instead of Microsoft Office which is holding on your desktop? There are lot of choices. Corel, Sun Microsystems, Apple, IBM and many others offer alternatives to Microsoft Office.

These options offer most of the features found in Microsoft Office, plus are also available for free or at a very nominal cost.

Here are the 5 Microsoft Office alternatives.

Google Docs

Developed by Internet search giant Google, Web-based Google Docs offers word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time. Google Docs also allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating real-time with other users.

Google Docs can also be accessed offline with Gears. When a user is not connected to the Internet, Google Docs uses information stored on his computer's hard drive, rather than relying on information sent across the network.

Corel WordPerfect

WordPerfect is a word processing application developed by Corel. The office software helps create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, manages email and has its own built-in PDF tools.

It lets users create letters, reports, newsletters, budgets, invoices, receipts, slide shows, proposals and interactive reports. It can also turn complex spreadsheets into charts and graphs.

OpenOffice

Another Microsoft Office competitor, OpenOffice is a free open-source office application suite offering support for standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as well as Microsoft Office formats. The suite offers word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases.

Adobe Buzzword

Here's a free online word processor from Adobe called Buzzword. It lets users write reports, proposals and share it with others.

Buzzword has two views, Document Organiser and Editor. The Editor choose fonts, text styles and format paragraphs. It also lets users add lists, images, tables, and comments to a document.The Document Organiser shows all Buzzword documents, the one's that are shared and created by the user.

Jarte

Another alternative to Microsoft Word is Jarte, a light-weight, portable word processor based on the WordPad engine.Its basically a freeware and can be downloaded from its website freely.Jarte uses the Windows built-in word processing engine at its core.

Features include the ability to edit Microsoft Word documents, OLE support, spell checker, page breaks and single-click bookmarking.

New Bluetooth Mouse

Traveler 915 BT Laser Bluetooth Mouse is the new range of Bluetooth Mouse launched by Genius..

This bluetooth mouse sports an advanced high precision laser sensor that can track on any polished surfaces. Thus this mouse can be used in presentations because of its laser source.

It also includes a 1600/800 dpi switching system, which allows the users to choose the resolution they require and It also comes with metal cover finish.

This new product can be used as a mouse and as a presenter. The user has been provided the ability to switch between them by simply pressing the switch mode button.

The presenter mode is like a Laser Pointer which instead is being used for moving the Page up/down. The mouse requires 2 batteries to work and has a battery charge indicator.

Traveler 915 BT Laser Bluetooth Mouse comes with a three year warranty.Its has dual purpose and thus the users especially from main business can be benefited alot..

Gmail:Typing In Indian Languages

Usually we used to type mail in English only. We will be using the mail services for all our friends,family and other proposes. However, there was one limitation that family members and friends who prefer to communicate in their mother tongue (language) did not have an easy way to type and send email in their language of choice. Now Gmail has announced a new feature that makes us easy to type email in Indian languages.

When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character(Hindi), as the image displayed below. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you will need to go the "Settings" Tab and then enable this option in the "Language" section.

Images:Official Gmail Blog..

When you click the Indian languages icon, you can type words the way they sound in English and Gmail will automatically convert the word to its Indian local language equivalent. For example, if a Hindi speaker types "namaste" then gmail will transliterate to Hindi automatically after you give a space. Gmail currently support five Indian languages --

Hindi,

Tamil,

Telugu,

Kannada and

Malayalam..

You can select the language of your choice from the drop-down list next to the icon.

Images:Official Gmail Blog

This feature was built using Google's transliteration technology, which is also available on Google India Labs, Orkut, Blogger and iGoogle. I hope you users find this feature useful to communicate with those of your friends and family who prefer to write in their native language, and in the near future it will be made available soon to businesses and schools using Google Apps.

Now start replying emails to all in native languages..