IBM Offering New Office App Suite for Free

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