Everyone knows what Microsoft Word is. Its an amazing word processor made by Microsoft. A downside to Microsoft Word is that it is very expensive and not everyone can afford it.

Even though you might not have Word, there are a ton of awesome alternatives available on the web. Here are some word processors you might not have known about:

OpenOffice: Open Office is a free open source office suite. Just like Microsoft is has its own version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and more.

Google Docs: Google Docs allows you to upload your own files to it and edit them and or view them. It also allows you to share your work with the world. Docs allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings and forms.

AbiWord: AbiWord is a free word processor similar to Microsoft Word.

ThinkFree: ThinkFree lets you view documents, and has its own version of Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

Zoho: Zoho lets you view and edit documents.

Atlantis: Atlantis is a fast, compact word processor.

Q10: If you want to get productive Q10 is your best bet. Its a full screen text editor which basically makes you focus on the task at hand (writing) and doesn’t let you get distracted.

Did I miss any other programs? What do you think of the ones above? Leave your opinion below!

===

About the author: Edwin is young blogger that gives awesome internet, blogging and computer tips on his site Guide Goods. Learn something new today!

[Windows Only]

I wasn’t paying attention last year, when it was announced that Money Goes Bust. Over the years, I have used Microsoft’s home budgeting software several times and I know people that are still using it.

On June 10th of 2009, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue Microsoft Money. That was a problem for several people then, and it continues to be a problem now. If you have an old copy of MS Money, it won’t install properly because it requires an online activation that is no longer supported.

One of my friends, Joanne, recently contacted me and said that she was having trouble installing something called Money Plus Sunset Deluxe. She was getting an error about corrupt autorun.inf, and the install was failing. I found the solution to that autorun problem, but I was curious about this new version of MS Money.

This Sunsetversion is free, and according to Microsoft,

Money Plus Sunset Deluxe is designed to be a replacement for expired versions of Money Plus Essentials, Money Plus Deluxe, and Money Plus Premium versions.

For those currently using MS Money, don’t panic. If you need to re-install MS Money for some reason, you can use the Sunset edition instead. There are also several alternatives to MS Money that can import your Money backup files. I recommend Mint.com if your budgeting isn’t too complicated.

I decided to give Money Plus Sunset Deluxe a try. It’s only a 34mb download, and the installation is pretty simple. Below you can see screenshots as it installed on my machine.

Download Microsoft Money Plus Sunset edition (Windows XP, Vista, 7)

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I always enjoyed using MS Money. If you are using it now, you may want to give Sunset a try. I expect that this free version will be available for a long time, and it does not require activation or a previous license.

[Windows Only] SharePod is a small portable freeware alternative to iTunes. There’s no doubt that iTunes is a fantastic program. However, it’s about a 93mb download and it’s not going to be on every PC that you might want to hook your iPod up to.

The advantages of SharePod are it’s small size and it’s portability. SharePod is a single executable file about 5mb in size. You can move the SharePod.exe file onto your iPod and take it with you anywhere you go. It will run right from the iPod without any installation.

Here’s what it looks like:

SharePod will let you do many of the things that the huge iTunes app will do, such as:

• Add and remove music and videos from your iPod
• Add, remove and edit playlists
• Add and remove album art
• View and backup photos
• Copy music, videos and playlists from your iPod to PC
• Import music/videos into your iTunes library
• Tag editing
• Drag n drop to and from Explorer

Besides the typical iPods and Nanos, SharePod also supports iPhone and iTouch. The only major drawback I’ve found, is that it requires Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework to be installed. Everything I’ve tried works flawlessly, and the interface is nice and simple.

Note: Another iTunes alternative we’ve discussed here is Floola, which is also free and portable.

Download SharePod

Techie Buzz Verdict:

I enjoyed trying SharePod and I plan to keep it on my Nano. It’s so handy being able to add and remove songs from any computer I’m using. If you don’t have a portable utility like this already, you should give this one a try.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)

[Windows Only] I don’t have anything against Microsoft Word, except the price. Most businesses will pay the big money that MS wants, but a home user will usually use whatever is already installed on their PC. That does not have to be true. There are several free Word alternatives that will happily do the same job. I found one free replacement that looks great and will even run quickly on older PCs. It’s called DeVicky Word.

DeVicky Word not only does many of the things that MS Word does, it has a few unique features that make it worth downloading.

Here’s a list of some of the features:

* Bullets and Numbered Lists – completely customizable
* Character and Paragraph Formatting – full WYSIWYG
* Document Sections – add as many sections as you need
* Headers and Footers
* Hypertext Links – inside and outside links
* Multi-Level Undo / Redo
* Page and Document Settings
* Page Columns – any number of columns
* Printing – what you see is what you get
* Search and Replace
* Spell Checking
* Tables – add tables within tables if needed
* Text Frames – add boxes of text anywhere
* Doc Reader – listen to you docs

Supported File Formats

* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Export
* Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) Import
* Adobe Portable Document Format Archive (PDF/A) Export
* Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
* Image Formats – TIFF, WMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF
* Microsoft Office Open XML (DOCX)
* Microsoft Word (DOC)
* Rich Text Format (RTF)

Download DeVicky Word:
http://www.devvicky.com/products.php

Techie Buzz Verdict:

After using it for a short while, I decided that I liked DeVicky better than the Word alternatives I’ve tried in the past. It seems more responsive and launches much quicker than the other full featured apps.  It also has very good built in help files.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4/5 (Excellent)

Each and every software you use may have an alternative, but how do you find the best alternative for the software you are using?  By Googling for the alternatives or by asking friends to give you some suggestions.

If you have used any of the above mentioned methods to find alternatives for popular softwares, you should definitely give a try to a new service called AlternativeTo, which suggests alternatives for Windows, Mac and Linux based systems.

To find alternatives for softwares, head to AlternativeTo and search for the software, you should see a listing of software that matches your search results.

Once you find the software in the search results, click on the Find alternatives to Software Namelink, to find the alternatives for the software.

Clicking on the link should display a list of software, that are similar to the one you are searching, the list may contain Freeware, Open Source as well as commercial software.

Definitely useful if you want to save time while looking for software alternatives.

AlternativeTo