Best free office-type suites
Microsoft offers lifeline for Office 2007 users
Many users hate the new Ribbon interface that was introduced in Office 2007. A common complaint is users can't find the functions they were familiar with in earlier Office versions. Now there is some hope: Microsoft is offering, from its experimental Office Labs site, a free add-in that allows users to search for commands. At the same site you'll also find a few other useful Office freebies.
http://www.officelabs.com/Pages/Default.aspx
Use Open Office online
Many folks are curious about the possibility of using Open Office as a free alternative to Microsoft Office, but never get around to downloading and installing it. Now you can try it out online using this free service that offers you Open Office as part of an online desktop environment. I found the Linux based KDE desktop too slow to be useful for real work, but the access provided to Open Office and other Linux apps could prove valuable to anyone who wants to evaluate the capabilities of this software.
http://www.ulteo.com/home/en/home?autolang=en
Office 2007 "Save as PDF" feature added
One popular feature of the beta version of MS Office 2007, which was removed from the product prior to its official release, was the ability to save document files in PDF format. Apparently it was all down to legal arguments between Microsoft and Adobe, and Microsoft stated that the facility would be re-introduced by way of a downloadable freebie. That freebie has now been released, and adds an option to all of the Office 2007 applications to save your work as a PDF file for easy distribution and printing to those who don't have Office or who don't need to modify the files.
http://tinyurl.com/v46jc (microsoft.com)