As promised a few posts ago, I am going to provide you with some direction on which software suites that can be used to replace Microsoft products. Yes, there are alternatives that are free to use and can be as detailed as Microsoft Office.

There are two types of software that can be used: the type of software is a full download and every time you use it you work directly off your hard drive (so that if you are offline for a long time each week may actually be the suite of programs for you to use), or the second type of services are the on-demand services where the software is housed in an online server and which you access through a browser from any operating system (you can use a Linux flavor operating system like Ubuntu, a Mac system, or any Windows operating system),

The first type of program suite is called "Open Office" and can be found at www.openoffice.org. There is a version for any type of operating system including Linux flavored operating systems. It is a substantial download but it only needs to be downloaded once and you have it for any length of time. You can also get updates about twice a year. Within the Open Office Suite there is a very good spreadsheet program that gives you nearly everything you might need. You can save spreadsheets in the Microsoft format of .xls file. However, there are some things that this spreadsheet cannot do that an excel spreadsheet can do.

The second type of program, on-demand suites, there is a huge array of contenders. The best comparison of the ten best contenders is found at the IT|Redux blog under the heading of "Spreadsheet Roundup". As noted in this blog, the closest contender to Microsoft Excel is ThinkFree.

However, I do not use ThinkFree that much as I find that 90% of the times I need a spreadsheet I do not need a complex program like ThinkFree. For 90% of the times I need a spreadsheet, I need something that can give me just an ordinary and minimal capability, and for this I use Google's Docs and Spreadsheets. When I need charting capabilities derived from a spreadsheet, I find EditGrid to have the best charting capabilities.

However, every person's requirements for a spreadsheet differs and you might find one of the other ten contenders at IT|Redux might be the one you need.