Do I Need To Buy Microsoft Office

If you don’t have reliable Internet access or are more comfortable installing programs on your computer, there’s no shortage of competition, either. The programs in Corel’s WordPerfect Office suite ($300; corel.com) can also open and save documents in MS Office format. There are free open-source suites as well, such as openoffice.org and the Mac-only neooffice.org. Besides their lower cost, most of these programs have other small advantages too, like saving docs in PDF format without installing extra software—a feature still not available on Office 2007 for Windows. Just one more thing to think about before handing your money over to Microsoft.