Last week I told you about laptops from Acer, Dell and Hewlett-Packard available for US$500 to $600, depending upon configuration. But what if none of those notebooks floats your boat?

You can still trim the cost of any laptop you're considering. This week I've got some tips on how to save money on productivity suites such as Microsoft Office, which can add up to $350 to your laptop's price tag.

Next week, I'll have more tips for shaving dollars off your laptop purchase. If you've got a money-saving laptop tip, please share it with me.

Weighing the Office Alternatives

Recently, when configuring an HP Pavilion dv5t (beginning price: $600), I was given several choices for office productivity suites:
If your productivity software needs are relatively modest, Microsoft Works or Corel WordPerfect may be all you need.

While it lacks some of the features and applications of Office, such as a presentation program, Microsoft Works includes a word processor that opens Word files and produces compatible files, a spreadsheet program that creates files that are interchangeable with Microsoft Excel, a calendar program, and more.

Similarly, Corel WordPerfect Office X4 offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program (all files are compatible with Microsoft Office applications), visual data analysis tool, e-mail program, and more. WordPerfect Office even provides better PDF support than Office 2007.

Free Productivity Apps

But you might not need to buy any software. Another alternative is to sign up for Google Docs or Zoho. Both offer free online tools for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations. All you need is a Web browser and an Internet connection to use them. Your documents live in "the cloud" (the Internet), so you can access and edit them from any computer with a browser.

You can even work with some Google and Zoho files offline. For example, last year Zoho announced you can work with its word processing docs offline. Zoho recently added offline capabilities to its e-mail service, too. I've tested Google Docs and recommend it, though it doesn't have the full range of tools you'd get with Office. See "Working Offline With Google Docs" Part 1 and Part 2.

There's yet another option: OpenOffice.org, a free, open-source productivity suite available for both Windows PCs, Macs, Linux-based systems, among others. OpenOffice.org includes a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation program. It can open some older versions of Word files that not even Office 2007 can handle. New features for OpenOffice.org 3.0 include the ability to import PDF documents.

By the way, you might want to read Scott Spanbauer's "Life Without Desktop Software," in which he went without desktop applications for a week and reported on his experiences.

Office Buying Tips

Still convinced you want Microsoft Office on your new laptop?

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