Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Free Office Suite for Windows

by Rob - December 31st, 2008.
Filed under: Uncategorized.

Yes, I know Open Office is free, but here’s another excellent choice, also free: SoftMaker Office 2006 for Windows. Included are a Microsoft Word-compatible wordprocessor called TextMaker and a Microsoft Excel-compatible spreadsheet called PlanMaker.

And for WordStar users like me, TextMaker optionally supports the WordStar keyboard interface. Just select Extras, Customize, Keyboard Mappings and switch from “Default” (Word-like) to “Classic” (WordStar-like). Cool!

Oh, and at Extras, Preferences, Files, Default file format, you can set the format used for saving files to Open Document, various flavours of Word, or TextMaker’s own format.

It’s a nice package (in fact, I paid to register an earlier version of TextMaker back in 2003); this free version is well worth grabbing. It’s fully functional, not time-limited, and has no restrictions (although SoftMaker does offer a more-recent version as commercial software, for those who want the latest and greatest).

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site

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