IBM Press Release Announcing Symphony Release

Looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Office? Check out this IBM site, where you can download a free package of IBM software with applications that square off against components of MS’s Office suite–a word processor to rival Word, a spreadsheet to go up against Excel, and business-presentation software as an alternative to PowerPoint.

One particularly attractive feature of Symphony is the ability to export documents to PDF.

• Supported Windows platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista
• Supported Linux platforms: SLED 10, RHEL 5, Redhat5
• Macintosh platform will be supported at a later date

When I bought my Dell laptop a few months ago, I opted not to have Office installed on it. I’ve been using Google Documents ever since, which works pretty well for the most part; but there have been times I’ve wished I’d spent the extra $100. Now I’m glad I waited!