While I put this in the Ubuntu category, this applies to Windows and Macintosh, too.

I happened upon an ad on a site I visit regularly. This ad was for Best Buy and Microsoft Office. The central point of the ad was that Microsoft office was "essential for school."

With school starting again soon, I feel honor-bound to let prospective buyers of a Microsoft Office suite that there is a free alternative out there. There is no need to buy one of the suites for $150 (or just $100 at Best Buy, on sale) for just the bare-bones suite or upwards of $680 for the "Ultimate" package. Check out Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice. For a grand total of $0, you get Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, and Base—word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing/diagramming, and database programs, respectively. Each of these are the equivalent of (and in many ways, superior to) Microsoft's Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access (while Draw really doesn't have a Microsoft Office counterpart, though Publisher comes close). If you're looking for a replacement for Outlook, look no further than Mozilla's Thunderbird with calendar plug-in.

The Microsoft Office suite that comes closest to the OpenOffice/Thunderbird combination would put you back $500. Instead, pay $0 and enjoy software that works better than Microsoft's offering.