10 Freeware Favorites A Suite for Scrooge Eric Grevstad
OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 (50.5MB): As our May 2002 review said, the highest compliment you can give this global open-source project is that it's good enough to have the Microsoft Office team running scared. Very scared.
A full-powered, feature-packed office suite with excellent (though not perfect) Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file compatibility plus its own wave-of-the-future XML file format, OpenOffice.org is short on hand-holding support and lacks an e-mail/schedule module to compete with Outlook, as well as a database to rival Access. But otherwise, it's a darn near ideal solution for anyone upgrading from a bundled copy of Works, experimenting with a mixed Windows/Linux environment, or reluctant to pay the price of a PC ($479) for Microsoft Office Standard Edition. You can't afford not to check it out.
Eudora 5.1.1 (6.2MB): Did someone mention OpenOffice.org's lack of an e-mail client? We're getting a bit impatient waiting for a long-promised upgrade (indeed, the next release of Pegasus Mail might make us switch), but for now we're still content to use Eudora, the world's most popular free e-mail package.
Palm Desktop 4.1 (9.2MB): Did someone mention OpenOffice.org's lack of an appointment calendar and address book? You don't need to own a Palm PDA to use Palm's supremely simple yet capable personal information manager (although in that case you'll want to turn off the HotSync Manager handheld synchronization utility). The latest Palm Desktop even goes beyond the basics with nice touches like expense reporting and a choice of color schemes.
3M Post-It Software Notes 2.1 Lite (2.0MB): Get those yellow sticky notes off your monitor and onto your screen! Wait, that didn't sound right; how about "Get them off your desktop and onto your desktop"? Anyway, the free Windows version of 3M's ubiquitous Post-It Notes works amazingly like the paper originals, letting you clutter your Windows desktop -- until you choose to hide or cascade them -- with a variety of background or always-on-top reminders with different fonts, colors, and optional alarms. Once you switch off the cartoony sound effects, you'll find them surprisingly handy.
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP (4.1MB for 10): They've changed trivially since we reviewed them a year ago, but Microsoft's freebies are still our favorite ways to perk up Windows XP. Whether your favorite is the HTML or CD slide-show maker, the scientific calculator, or the power-user TweakUI or Virtual Desktop Manager, PowerToys make the operating system more useful and more fun.
