Continuing on our series, where we talk about Free Microsoft Office Alternatives, we are going into part 2, where we talk about Free Microsoft Word Alternatives, using which users can easily create and edit word documents.

Though there are several free word alternatives, we will cover only the best of them, giving you ample choices to make a decision from moving towards a better and cheaper alternative. The alternatives are segregated into two categories as desktop word alternatives and online word alternatives.

Best Free Desktop Microsoft Word Alternatives

Jarte Jarte is a portable desktop based word processor, that allows you to create and edit word documents. Jarte also provides you with with tabbed document windows for easy access to your open documents. Read our review Jarte: Free Portable Word Processor.

Abiword Abiword is another free desktop based word processing program which provides users with most of the features available in Microsoft Word, in addition to that Abiword is multi-platform, so you can use in on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, QNX and Solaris.

Best Free Online Microsoft Word Alternatives

Google Docs Google Docs has a powerful word processor allowing you to quickly write and publish documents, along with the ability to collaborate with multiple persons, while  editing the document.

Zoho Writer – Zoho offers around 20+ free online applications including Writer for word processing.  The interface on Writer is pretty familiar for those who have already been using MS Word.

Buzzword  A offering from Adobe Acrobat provides you with a word processor and a Adobe Air application to manage your documents from your desktop. Read our review, Battle of the Office Suite, Adobe’s Acrobat.com.

Do you know of any other Free Microsoft Word alternatives? Do add to the list by contributing with your comments.