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9 Bargain IT Tools For SMBs

By Kevin Casey 12/14/2012 Stretch your IT budget with open source and free products and services. Added win: Open source tools' opportunity for customization.

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OpenOffice For Docs, Spreadsheets And More

The OpenOffice productivity suite offers a free alternative to Microsoft Office or other commercial productivity suites. It supports the usual suspects: Documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and so forth. Draker uses OpenOffice in its Austin, Texas, branch -- but Microsoft Office in its Burlington, Vt., headquarters. Thorpe noted it can be wise to consider individual or departmental use cases when deciding what to install on employee machines. It might reduce headaches and grumbling to give Microsoft Excel to hardcore spreadsheet jockeys, for instance, while reserving OpenOffice for less intensive users. "[Doing so] works better for everyone all around," he said.

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