The days of spending huge amounts of cash on the latest version of Microsoft Word are gone. In the last few years, a whole range of free online word processing applications have become available which give you all the features you will need to create letters, reports or even write your own book.
Not only are they free, the fact they are all web-based means they have some big advantages. First, you can access them on any computer with an internet connection, and second, you can save your documents online so these can be accessed anywhere you like.
Here are a few different ones for you to take a look at.
Google Drive
Probably the most commonly used online office package, Google Drive is not only a word processor but can also be used to make spread sheets and presentations. Google Drive also makes it really easy to share documents with other Drive users allowing more than one person to work on a file at once.
You get 15 GB of free online storage space to store all your files, which should be more than enough. All you need to do is sign in with a Google account at the Google Drive website to get started.
Adobe Buzzword
Buzzword is angled more towards business users as it allows multiple users to work on a project at once. Each user can be assigned different permissions allowing you to manage what level of access they have to each file.
One advantage of Buzzword is that you can go back through previous versions of a document in order to undo any changes that have been made by other users. It also allows you to create what Adobe call print-perfect documents, which means that when you print something it will look exactly as it did on the screen.
To try Buzzword just go to Adobe's Buzzword site and sign in with a free Adobe account.
Apple iWork
For anyone who has an iOS device with an iCloud account, Apple has made their iWork office suite available for free through icloud.com. This includes Pages for text documents, Numbers for spread sheets and Keynote for presentations.
A great advantage of iWork is that it will automatically sync your documents with the Mac and iOS versions of the programs as well. If you’ve bought a new Mac or iPhone recently then you should be able to get these free too.
Go to the iCloud webpage and sign in with your Apple ID to give it a try.