Writing is its own reward. -Henry Miller

OpenOffice.org has released OpenOffice 3.0 Beta free to download. If you are not familiar with OpenOffice, it is an open source office suite from Sun Microsystems. It is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Office and at a great price - free (of course, contributing insures the continuation of the project). The newest features are listed at the site. The most reported new feature is better support for the Mac OS.

When you consider that Office Small Business has an estimated retail price of $449.95, OpenOffice can be a viable and economical alternative for your business. As PC World reports, OpenOffice supports the OpenDocument format as well as .doc, .xls., and .ppt. In fact, unless the PC's we buy for our office have come preloaded with Office, we use OpenOffice. It is an affordable alternative for the family computer as well. Give it a shot.