word processing

I love a good win-win.

From now until December 24, you can get SoftMaker FreeOffice for Windows or Linux absolutely free. And when you do, SoftMaker will donate 0.10 Euros to betterplace.org, which raises funds for a variety of worthy worldwide projects.

So what the heck is SoftMaker FreeOffice? As you may have guessed from the name, it's the free version of SoftMaker's commercial office suite. It provides word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, all with an interface that closely resembles Microsoft Office 2003.

Speaking of which, FreeOffice is fully file-compatible with Microsoft's suite, though it'… Read more

As you've no doubt heard by now, Microsoft just announced Office 2013 and The New Microsoft Office suite.

Not announced: pricing.

Call it a hunch, but I suspect Microsoft will charge at least as much for Office 2013 as it does for Office 2010. After all, the new suite is chock-full of new features, giving Microsoft ample justification for keeping prices the same -- or even raising them.

Currently, Office 2010 Home and Student and Office 2010 Home and Business sell for $119.99 and $199.99, respectively. That's for a single-user license. The three-user version of Home … Read more

Some people still snicker when they see a coworker toting an iPad. After all, who can get any real work done on that Etch-a-Sketch on steroids?

Lots of people, actually. And as the quality and quantity of iPad apps increase, the devices inch closer to becoming workplace essentials.

Case in point: the free CloudOn program whose mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint give you the Office 2007/2010 interface when working on files stored on the Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box online storage services.

Support for Office XML file types, and a ribbon to boot Speculation continues as to … Read more

All those Bree Serif, Kaushan Script, and Lovers Quarrel font fans will now be able to bring into play these different scripts while working in Google Docs. The Web giant announced today that it is adding 450 new fonts and 60 new templates to its word processing program.

"Often the best way to get your point across is to present your idea in a creative, captivating way," Google software engineer Isabella Ip wrote in a company blog post. "Today, we added over 450 new fonts to Google documents to make it easier for you to add a … Read more

Pages for iOS may not be as sophisticated as other desktop word-processing apps, but it packs plenty of punch when you just want a way to produce nice-looking documents on the go. After only a few minutes playing around with the controls, we were able to create documents with stylized text, imported images, tables, and graphs, and make formatting changes on-the-fly, all using the touch-screen keyboard. The program comes with 16 Apple-designed templates to start from, including standard letters, letters with photos, resume layouts, project reports, and many more. With Apple's keyboard dock connected, Pages performed much like a … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers.

This week people wrote in with questions on how the Java vulnerabilities and Flashback malware seen on OS X might affect Linux systems and older versions of OS X, how to set up Time Machine to work with networked volumes, and the options for showing invisible characters when composing word processing documents in OS X. We welcome alternative approaches and views from readers, so if you have any suggestions, post them in the comments!

Question: Setting up Time Machine on any networked volume MacFixIt reader … Read more

When we reviewed Tomahawk Gold from NativeWinds, we found it to be a very good integrated PDF and word processing program: fast, light, and portable, yet ready for business. Tomahawk PDF+ ("PDF Plus") is a freeware version of Tomahawk Gold. Some of the premium tool's features are disabled in PDF+. For example, it can create PDFs and convert documents to PDF, but it can't open PDFs created by some other programs, including Adobe PDFs. However, it can extract data from many of those documents with its PDF Extractor and Image Manager.

PDF+'s user interface is … Read more

With the Web having so many interesting things to look at, it can be difficult to get work done. Since you can already use Google Chrome to check your e-mail, the weather, and news stories, why not try to get some work done in it, too? Here's a serving of five distraction-free (and free in cost) text editors available in the Chrome Web Store that you can use right inside of your browser, yet still save your work for later.

Write Space

This app offers that blank slate you often hear about. Working offline is no problem, … Read more

Later this month I'll be canceling my subscription to a leading security suite that runs on two of my home-office PCs. I'll replace it with Microsoft's free Security Essentials, which I've been using on my notebook since I bought it two years ago. I realized several months ago that I simply no longer needed to spend money for the convenience of an all-in-one security app.

That got me thinking: Is there any software that the average PC user needs to pay for? Most of us bought our current operating system--usually Windows or Mac OS X--as … Read more