IBM Offering New Office App Suite for Free

Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:13PM EDT

See Comments (6)

Microsoft Office has long had as big a monopoly on office apps as Windows has had on the desktop. Competitors like Corel's WordPerfect suite have long been virtually ignored as expensive also-rans, while free tools like OpenOffice.org have remained exclusive to the realm of hackers and open source geeks. Now a new competitor is entering the fray: IBM, which has long sold an even-more-ignored-than-Corel suite called SmartSuite will be offering its latest suite, Lotus Symphony, for free.

The Lotus Symphony name actually dates back to the DOS era: It is revived here with three components: A word processor, spreadsheet, and presentations system. They are available for download now (though be advised you'll need to register for an "IBM ID" to get them... and that'll take a while). The download itself is about 134MB, and the servers are currently struggling to handle the load.

Symphony is based on OpenOffice, and if you've ever used it, you'll find Symphony familiar. It does not have a terribly different interface or feature set, though I have not experimented with it enough yet (hey, it just came out today) to determine if I'll use it instead of OpenOffice, which is my primary office suite on one of my computers.

The advantage of Symphony (and OpenOffice) over Microsoft Office is obvious: The price. Unless you're a student, you're shelling out hundreds of dollars for very similar applications. Symphony is totally free, and in my experience with OpenOffice, it's almost fully compatible with Office documents. (My only issues have been with embedded graphics in Word documents and saved envelopes.)

I'll certainly give Symphony an extended try, given Lotus's generally good track record at producing software. Why not give it a try yourself? It don't cost nothin'.

LINK: IBM to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft's Line

Comments on IBM Offering New Office App Suite for Free

Post a Comment

Join in the discussion. Here you'll see the comments in the order they were posted.

  • 1 Posted by lewinjon on Thu Sep 3, 2009 6:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Thanks Chris for the info about Lotus Symphony. It might have been years before I discovered that it was available for free. I downloaded it and tried it and so far, I feel it has Open Office beat. Right from the start I saw it loads much faster. The interface is clean and attractive. Good features. I won't go back to open offce unless I find a compatibility issue with MS Office.

  • 2 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Cool - thanks for the heads up on this Chris - I gave up on MS Office due to the high price and have had zero issues using Open Office to date, so now I will give Lotus Symphony a try. I am hoping that the interface for the word processor will be a little more friendly than the one in Open Office - thats the only beef I have about Open Office.

  • 3 Posted by rogueist on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:49PM EDT Report Abuse

    Yep the user interface for the Word Processor part was much much better, BUT I could not properly open several documents - it appears there are still a few rendering bugs when it comes to indentation and markers. And I found that it was very slow. Not much of a memory hog at all despite all the warnings saying 1Gb of RAM - it barely used 60 to 80 Mb to load and run it all. Still a far cry from the only 24Mb that Open Office uses, but thats fine.

  • 4 Posted by vrtjason on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:38PM EDT Report Abuse

    One aspect of Microsoft Office is that once you install the program, a file remains in memory even if you have closed MS Office. That file is known as CFD.exe, and it has been known to be a target for viruses and spyware that latch on to it. It's also hard to remove without causing collateral damage to your system (Microsoft advises that you simply shut it off by doing an Add/Remove Programs on MS Office, then doing a "change feature" on the option to provide enhanced accessibility, which CFD.exe does). You wouldn't get all this risk if you just used OpenOffice or Lotus.

  • 5 Posted by rivashugo@sbcglobal.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:42PM EDT Report Abuse

    i downloaded it but when i tried to run it i got a page of errors. not sure what went wrong. it also took like 30 mins to download. i'll stick to MS and OpenOffice x now...

More Posts: First Prev 1 2 Next Last

Post a Comment

Sign In to Post a Comment

My Tech

Please enable your browser's cookies to activate the My Tech column.

Also on Yahoo! Tech

Computers Home Office Wi-Fi & Networking Phones & PDAs Cameras & Camcorders TV & Home Theater Portable Audio
 

Site Map | Tour | Subscribe to Yahoo! Tech

Question and Answer content at Yahoo! Tech is written by Yahoo! users at Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any Yahoo! Answers content. For more information, read the Full Disclaimer.

Opinions expressed by the Advisors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Yahoo! Inc. Yahoo! receives no compensation from any manufacturer or distributor nor does it compensate any Advisor for the coverage of any product or service in any Advisor's content.