A steaming hot cup of "Shut the Java Up" with your virtual paper.

Alternatives to Microsoft Office exist and can be better solutions for some users. Google Docs receives a lot of attention for its free and compatible nature but, although it can be used offline, leaves room purely offline solutions. To say the least, I use it as a word processor only rarely. My day-to-day writing is done within LibreOffice despite the handful of bugs and, albeit increasingly rare, crash to desktops.

There was a time where it would crash three times per news post; now, it only crashes once every week or two.

InfoWorld kept an eye on OpenOffice, the project which dawned LibreOffice after the Sun-set, as it reached its own 4.0 milestone. OpenOffice, now owned by Apache, is also working toward isolating and eradicating Java from its code. Both projects have been advancing steadily toward similar goals with C++ not being the least common detail. The reviewer, for what a numerical score is worth, decided that both projects are still identically rated across all categories.

In the end he seems to believe the two programs are separated by release ideology: OpenOffice is often more polished where LibreOffice is polished more often. In either case, both are free, so feel… free… to try them out if you are browsing for an office suite.