Open Office, sponsored by Sun Microsystems, is a viable free alternative to Microsoft Office. Not quite as much eye candy as Office, but it works perfectly so far.

Patrick Norton highlighted Open Office in his segment about favorite free programs for Windows last night. I decided to bite. I have tested very few of the features, but the program suite seems rock solid stable.

A version is available for Macintosh, but it runs under X11. I can't wait to see this run natively in Jaguar or Panther so we can replace the less-powerful AppleWorks.

The download is very large, and prefers Stuffit Expander to decompress. Stuffit is also one of Patrick's favorite free programs.