Alternatives to Microsoft Office

	It's no secret that Microsoft Office dominates the productivity suite market, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to go. Corel and Sun Microsystems offer two alternatives that provide a core stable of programs at a fraction of the price of Microsoft's package.

Corel's WordPerfect Office 12 sports interface improvements and one-click PDF, HTML and XML publishing. StarOffice 8 is a lesser-known name, but it provides all the basic productivity tools and throws in a couple of extras, such as a drawing program. Of course, there are trade-offs: most notably, the two suites are not the best at converting Microsoft Office files.

So which to choose? Budget, work habits and necessity will all come into play, but to help get you started, we have created a comparison chart of what the Standard edition of each office suite has to offer out of the box. Read on to see which one is most suitable for you.

Office suite comparison
	Microsoft Office 2003 Standard Edition	WordPerfect Office 12	StarOffice 8
Price (inc. VAT)
	£369.99	£235	£45.97
OS support
	Windows	Windows	Windows, Linux, Solaris
Features
Word processor	Word	WordPerfect	Writer
Spreadsheet	Excel	Quattro Pro	Calc
Presentations	PowerPoint	Presentations	Impress
Email	Outlook	n/a	n/a
Database	n/a	n/a	Base (Adabas D)
Drawing	n/a	n/a	Draw
Support plans
Phone	2 free incidents (toll call); £45 per incident thereafter (toll free); £150 for 5-incident pack	£15 per incident (toll free); 10 incidents for £90; 15 incidents for £150; pay-as-you-go, £1.50 a minute	3 free support incidents (phone or email) in first 60 days; $30 (~£17) per phone session thereafter
Email	2 free incidents; £29 per incident thereafter	unlimited free email enquiries	3 free support incidents (phone or email) in first 60 days; $25 (~£14) per email session thereafter