Hello, All,

Many of us have posted to ask about things that are truly free.

I've come across something very interesting - a totally free replacement
for MS Office that is supported by their rival, Sun Microsystems, called
OpenOffice.org.  It is an open source program with contributions from
developers all over the world, and may be run on all O/S platforms.  Prints
your documents to a free built-in PDF writer, has a powerful Draw tool that
lets you save your graphics as Flash, many extras.

You will see that a truly worldwide effort has been put in by people mainly
donating their time and effort, with the deep pockets of Sun to help out
(they charge for a variant called StarOffice for more complex
applications).  It has received good press as a credible alternative to MS
Office, and can work in / save as, the usual MS formats.  Only limitation
I've read about thus far seems to be importing very complex MS macros into
the spreadsheet program.

A full description of the application can be found on the product pages at:
http://www.openoffice.org/product/

My main reason for checking into this was that my MS Office 97 didn't have
(pictorial) foreign language support, the other work-arounds didn't fix it.
and I was going to have to shell out for an upgrade.  Now it looks like I
won't have to, as the program supports many foreign character-based
languages.

One tip: since it is sponsored by Sun, they use (free) Java Runtime
Environment for enhanced features, and the program will look for it when
you install (I didn't have it on either computer).  I had to link it up
afterward, it was the only minor aggravation in getting set up, so I
suggest you do this part first.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html

Click on:

"The J2SE Java Runtime Environment (JRE) allows end-users to run Java
applications........"

Go through to the agreement and download screen and install according to
your machine.  Notice that the options that are not "Offline" are much
smaller if you have a slow connection. about 1.3 Meg for Windows version.

Since we're on the topic of size, I think the total OpenOffice.org download
was about 65 Meg, which was fine for me because I have ADSL, but a friend
with a slower, cheaper version of cable service had it time out.  You may
want to get a friend with high-speed to download and burn a copy for
you.  If you don't know anyone, I think I saw a reference to "CD" on the
site, probably a token charge if you need it.

I've just gotten set up with the program and like what I see thus far,
hopefully not too much of a learning curve.  Long post, I'd better end it
now, but this program is so well done, (and of course, free), that I had to
pass it along.  Hopefully, it will save many of us a great deal of money
and serve us well.

Regards, Kent Jacobson

      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
        programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
                       http://freepctech.com/rode