Yes. It says SoftMaker Office 2008. You’re thinking “Hey dude and dudette, this think is like a brontosaur – it’s three years old!” Yeah, we know it’s 2011. We have calendars. If this were a wine magazine and we were writing about Chateau Bordeaux, vintage 2008, you’d be hollering at us because it’s not old enough. So you’re the type that just can’t be pleased, right? I’ve got bad news for you. This is not a wine newsletter, if you want a wine newsletter, write to our head wino, EB. If enough of you write, she’ll probably tell you all you want to know about Boone’s Farm Fairy Peach 2011 or Richard’s Wild Irish Rose 2010 (it was a great year for Richard).
For those of you don’t want to hear about wine, but software for your computer, we can tell you this: The one thing we get the most requests for is a free office suite. Some of you don’t want to spend $300 – $500 for Microsoft Office. Some of you (like us) couldn’t come up with $500 if it would save the world. Others are really angry with Microsoft about that stupid ribbon. What’s with that anyway? Are people getting so lazy they can’t click “Tools”. I’d like to tie the guy who invented the ribbon with a ribbon and throw him in EB’s house for a week. Then let her verbally abuse him for feed him her famous veggie burgers on the barbie. Or her grilled coconut on a stick. After that week, we’d all be back to clicking “Tools”, “Options”.
Anyway, if you like ribbons, I’m sorry if we’ve offended you. If you don’t know what a ribbon is, download Windows Live Mail. If you’re easily upset, be prepared.
OK down to business. SoftMaker Office 2008 is a venerable established office suite that once use to cost money, but because of the wave of altruism sweeping the Web these days – where the rich folks take pity on us pathetic powerless poor folks – the folks who make SoftMaker Office have decided to dust off SoftMaker Office 2008, and give it away free.
Yeah, yeah, we know all about Open Office – but like most software they just can’t seem to leave it alone. It’s still free but it’s about as bloated as Microsoft Office. If you like bloat and/or love the feel of bloat, Open Office may me just your thing.
But we are all about alternatives, choices if you will. We give you choices like Baskin Robbins or Five Guys Hamburgers, or Starbucks do. Ah yes, Starbucks: where you can get overpriced coffee served yuppie-style 326 different ways. It’s still coffee. It still comes from a bean. Right? The bean still comes from a bush, right? And it’s still picked by underpaid, overworked, short people in places where no one wants to live, right? Remember Juan Valdez? He was short, right? I don’t remember.
SoftMaker Office is free and it’s three years-old. But that doesn’t mean it’s not any good. It’s actually very good. It’s almost a 60MB download – but Open Office is a 100MB download. Bloat. Bloat. Bloat. If you’re on dialup it doesn’t matter: a 60MB download is about as impossible a download as a 100MB download.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. SoftMaker Office 2008 is an office suite that runs great. It does what an office suite should do. It contains the following programs (the descriptions of each come from the SoftMaker Office 2008 Website).
TextMaker
“The Microsoft Word compatible word processor that’s so easy to use that you’ll begin to wonder why you struggled with Microsoft Word for so long.”
PlanMaker
“The Microsoft Excel compatible spreadsheet that opens and saves all your Excel workbooks and comes with many time-saving functions.”
SoftMaker Presentations
“The presentation-graphics program that not only lets you access all your PowerPoint files, but also makes your life easier with many additional features.”
The DecisionMaker
If you’re looking for a free office suite that does what you want to do; or if your a masochist who likes to dabble with office programs just because – and you have a need to have every single office program known to man, you’ll really like SoftMaker Office 2008.
If you want a few more features, you can buy SoftMaker Office 2010 – then friends won’t look at your computer and see the free SoftMaker Office installed and say: “That’s so 2008, man!” But if yo have backbone, you can download SoftMaker Office 2008 and say: “Yeah, it’s so 2008 man, but I’m $300 richer than you, man. And I don’t have to put up with those squirrelly ribbons. Why don’t you go to Starbucks and dump a $7 latte on your head, man?”
OK. If you want a really nice, free Office Suite, you should give SoftMaker Office a try. It’s compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 (32bit and 64bit). You can download it here. Again, remember it’s about a 60MB download. If you’re on dialup, let us know how that goes for ya.
Oh yes. One more thing. You have to give them a name (use Montrose, we don’t care) and a real email address, so they can send you a registration key to register the program. The key is free. Capiche?
SoftMaker Office works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 and 64bit)
I downloaded and installed this program. I was using Open Office but I can’t open my spreadsheets from Open Office with this program.
regards
Jean
Hi, I have used Softmaker Office 2008 and also later versions and it is all you would ever need for word processing and spread sheet work. The reason Softmaker is offering it free is to get more people to try their software and of course, hope people would like it enough to buy upgrades to later and much more powerful versions. You also get is a spell checker which is a bonus. Regarding Jean’s comment, she would need to save her Open Office documents in doc. Format to be compatible with Microsoft Office and Softmaker Office software also spread sheets in xls. Format. Softmaker cost around $79 when I bought it as it wasn’t free when I first got it which was very good value for what it was.
Regards, Jeff
Well I downloaded it ,but can’t install it because they didn’t send me the Serial number. I have waited for 2 days. I check my spam folder and nothing.
The serial number is sent immediately If you didn’t get it, your ISP just flat-out blocked it – and if they did, it won’t appear anywhere – not even in your spam folder. We’ve never heard of anyone not getting the key. We always suggest using a mail account where you control what’s deleted. Anytime an ISP uses spam filtering – you’re never going to get all your email. Even if they let you “look” online in a “spam” folder – some mail is blocked an deleted at the point it arrives at their servers. Get a Gmail account and use it. If you continue to use an ISP who insists on uses spam filtering you’ll never be sure you’re getting all your mail.
thanks for the tip. I just downloaded SoftMaker Office and feel like I’ve just come home to a software that is going to do what I want it to do with no headaches.