OpenOffice.org is a suite of office products that is open source and therefore free. In comparison, Microsofts product costs $400 per computer and have increasingly restrictive licenses. OpenOffice.org has now reached version 2 and is being adapted world-wide not only to save money but also for its advanced features, such as being able to write PDF files directly (not available from Microsoft), having a compact but open source format (XML) which prevents one from being locked to a vendor. The format is now an international standard. OpenOffice has no problem reading and writing Microsoft documents. I typically use it to read in the doc file and to write the text out in a more compact OpenOffice or text form - this saves me disk space since the doc format is a space-hog.

You can save thousands of dollars per year by adopting OpenOffice.org.

• The OpenOffice.org For Dummies by Gurdy Leete, Ellen Finkelstein, and Mary Leete. Publisher: For Dummies; Book and CD-ROM edition (December 1, 2003) ISBN: 0764542222

• The OpenOffice newsletter is posted on the web. For example, the November 2003 issue points out the many advantages of this software.