As a small business owner I am constantly pursuing the “bottom line” ;.It’s an easy formula, really. Just increase sales while decreasing expenses, right? Easier said than done I’m afraid. The fact is that a lot of production costs like fuel, rent, access to the internet, insurance, etc, continue to rise and don’t show signs of slowing any moment soon. Which means I’ve surely got to be downright cagey in conserving every dime I can, where I can.

So, when I upgraded to a new computer I went with performance for the lowest cost. That meant no frills, especially where software is concerned. Manufacturers want a supply and a knee to pre-install software bundles on your machine. Even if you’re a bit more technologically savvy and purchase and install software yourself, Microsoft Office Standard is like four hundred bucks, and you still have anti-virus and other vital software to shell out for. What’s an entrepreneur to accomplish?

I’m luckily enough to know some people who work in the tech sector and are a lot more knowledgeable than myself on the subject of personal computing. When I told one of my tech-head friends I was looking for a more affordable software solution he said to look at Open Office software.

He sent me to this site where they have an office for students Open Office software suite readily available for download, bundled with a free anti-virus suite! I tried it out and I’ve been very impressed in what I acquired for my dollar. The open office programs have the same features as their Microsoft counterparts, in addition to a few advantages unique to Open Office.

The bundle includes a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a database, an application for creating multi-media presentations, and a drawing program.

I haven’t got to spend a lot of time with the presentation program, Impress, however it interfaces nicely and seems to manage to create anything I will need for a good sales presentation. Draw, the graphics program, is fantastic and creates artwork in bitmap, GIF, JPEG, and a few other formats I’ve never even heard of. Most important in my experience though have been the word processor, called Write, and the spreadsheet, Calc.

Write has all of the features, there’s nothing missing. It also has its own helpful options like auto correct and auto complete, and it can produce documents in open document format, a document format manufactured by an industry consortium to be the new standard in compatibility. Furthermore it may read and edit my old Word documents, in addition to create new ones. It may also create .pdf files.

Calc shares exactly the same virtues as its word processing counterpart, with the abilities to learn and write existing Excel docs. That is huge for me personally because the vast majority of my payroll, invoicing, and expense tracking are maintained tailor made spreadsheets I built myself, and the ability to keep the info I’ve and continue my book keeping without starting over is crucial. I also love the natural language formula feature. It allows the creation of formulas using actual words like “sales-costs” ;.It’s really slick and saves me a huge amount of time.

Now if you’ve done your homework or have a background in computers you know that Open Office software is open source code software, meaning essentially that it’s free. So just why pay for software that may be gotten for nothing? Well the clear answer lies in the additional features, bonus software and support provided in this Open Office suite. At under $50 dollars for the whole Open Office software bundle, the anti-virus suite alone causes it to be worth the cost. Also included is one whole year of free technical support, which is important for the less technically inclined, such as for example me.