Free office alternatives for older PCs 1

[retrochoir]

I'm currently refurbishing a number of old PCs which have been donated to the charity I work for.

A typical specification would be Pentium II 500Mhz with 256Mb Ram and 10Gb Hard Disk.

I'm therefore looking for free office software which can run on a low power system. Most of these PCs are running Windows 98/ME. I've tried OpenOffice 2.4 but the different applications take ages to load.

Can anyone advise of any alternatives which will run on low power systems. It's important that they are free because these PCs will be given away to our charity's service users.

Thanks in advance.

 

[JPaules]

Even if you do find something, you are going to be looking at possible compatibility issues. Google used to have an online office suite but I don't know if they still do. Once again though, you're going to be looking at slow apps. There's only so much that can be done no matter how altruistic your intentions are.

--
JP

 

[cmeagan656]

Have a look at Google Docs which is what I believe JPaules was thinking of. If the IE connection is reasonably fast then Google Docs should run just fine as its Cloud based.

Hope this helps.

Please help us help you. Read Tek-Tips posting polices before posting.

 

[Celsoft]

Is MS works free and available ? Works wordprocessor aint bad - even if it doesnt have the bells & whisles that Word has. Failing that Wordpad has all the basics.
For cloud computing, maybe Zoho.com is better than Google docs (from anecdotal evidence), but I'm not sure if it has the same expected longevity.

 

[JPaules]

No, Works is not free.

--
JP

 

[Madawc]

You could always see if people could donate older versions of Word or Office

Madawc Williams (East Anglia, UK). Using Windows XP & Crystal 10

 

[SkipVought]

Craig's List, mebe?

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my old subtlety...
for a NUANCE![/sub]

 

[kjv1611]

Abiword?

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[retrochoir]

Thanks everyone for all your suggestions.

Abiword is just the type of app I'm looking for. It's opening up in a flash even on an old Pentium II.

Now if I can just find replacements for Excel, Access and Powerpoint! I like Gnumeric spreadsheet for Linux but it's not available for windows. If not then I'll have to stick with Google docs or Zoho.

I'd still prefer to have locally available apps though. Google docs and zoho are great but still not as quick as locally stored apps.

Thanks.

 

[kjv1611]

Another option would be to just look on eBay.com and/or half.com to see if anyone has several copies of Office 97, or at least a few serial/product numbers for Office 97 for cheap. You never know until you look... then you'd have it all in one suite again...

Also, someone here mentioned MS Works. You can get slightly older copies of Works for pretty cheap, I believe.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[xwb]

Excel -

http://projects.gnome.org/gnumeric/downloads.shtml

Lots of databases about - mysql, sqlite, postgres. Just depends on what you want to do with it. They have graphical front ends too.

Don't know about presentation packages.

 

[mcongdon]

You could try OpenOffice- I'm not extremely familiar with it, but I think that version 2 could run relatively well on the system you described.

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/source/sys_reqs_20.html

 

[kjv1611]

I've tried OpenOffice 2.4 but the different applications take ages to load.

You could try OpenOffice-

[PONDER]

I think you pulled a Me on that one.


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[mcongdon]

Whoops. Disregard that one ;-)

 

[kjv1611]

Here's another one. I've not tried it, myself, but I do recall hearing it's name before. It isn't free, but it's pretty cheap, at least:

http://www.ability.com/sales/products/office.php

Not sure if it would do better on older hardware or not.

This is where I saw it today:

http://www.msboycott.com/thealt/alts/office.shtml

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[retrochoir]

Just looked at the system requirements for Ability Office and it seems ideal. Unfortunately it's not free. We may consider installing the trial version and leave it up to the end user to decide about buying the full version.

Thanks.

 

[kjv1611]

That wouldn't be a bad way to go. Of course, it depends upon how the trial works as well. I mean, if it ends up expiring according to the date it was installed vs first use, then the end users might not get much of a shot at using it. But it wouldn't hurt to try, and just see how it works. You could try it on one machine by installing it, and waiting a week, then seeing if the trial period has decreased by 7 days or just the one.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[retrochoir]

Ok, thanks for the info and advice.

Cheers,

Jeff