Open Office

If it comes to dealing with word processing, powerpoint, spreadsheets, databases and so on, most people using a Windows PC would immediately think of Microsoft Office. Many PCs come with a 3 month test version, which however requires buying when this period is over. There is a good number of free and good programs that can do most, if not all Microsoft Office can.

Open Office

Open Office is free, open source application suite with several modules, including Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet, similar to Excel), Database (base), Impress (presentations), a powerpoint clone, Draw (graphics), Math ("A tool for creating and editing mathematical formulae, similar to Microsoft Equation Editor").

The recent versions allow you to open Microsoft password-protected documents and export to PDF. You can always save the documents in Microsoft compatible formats, so they can be opened and edited by folks using Microsoft Office components.

It may need getting used to the user interface, if you are coming from a Microsoft Office "background", but once you spend sometime with it, you will find it offers quite a lot for free! A basic version of Office "Office Home and Student 2010" with Word, excel & Powerpoint goes for about $150. Other versions offering all that O.O does cost considerably more.

Open Office is available in many languages and for different operating systems like Linux & MAC as well, in addition to Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7).

Get Open Office

Go to http://download.openoffice.org/index.html and select the right version for your PC. You need a fast connection for the about 160MB or it will take quite long to download.

Alternatives

There are quite a number, but I will name LibreOffice Productivity Suite from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/. This is similar to Open Office, from which it is derived.

Free Studio

This is what the manufacturer says about it:

"New Free Studio Manager is a completely redesigned all-in-one package for our programs. It contains 8 sections to bundle all free multimedia applications which have been developed by DVDVideoSoft. These sections the following: YouTube, MP3&Audio, CD-DVD-BD, DVD&Video, Photo&Images, Mobiles, Apple Devices, 3D. Thus all the programs are included in the new interface for easy access to any of them.

With this free software suite, offering 43 programs(!) you can convert video and audio files between different formats and to iPod, PSP, iPhone, BlackBerry and all popular mobile phones and devices; burn and rip DVDs and audio CDs; upload and download YouTube videos and music to your computer, iPod, PSP, iPhone and BlackBerry; perform basic editing of audio and video files as well as record videos and make snapshots.

Free Studio contains no spyware or adware. It's clearly free and absolutely safe to install and run."

So if you want to download a Youtube video in flash format, or convert it to mp4 or wmv for some reason, or you are not interested in the video but to convert a video clip to mp3 audio format, go to "Youtube" & select the appropriate tool. Go to www.youtube.com, copy the web address of the video you want, paste & go. The other tools are equally easy to use

Download Free Studio

Get this in one package (ca. 77Mb) or download individual programs from http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm

Supported OS: Windows XP/Vista/7

Alternatives

I cannot quickly think of a free converter with so much functionality, but a simple Google search will lead you to many results. As far as converting is concerned, because I think you cannot get videos directly from youtube.com, etc, iWisoft Free Video Converter from http://www.easy-video-converter.com/. It's simple to use, you can even install it on a USB/flash drive, it's fast and if I remember well, it does not limit the size of the video you convert. Some free versions limit you to 320 x 240 pixels and so on.

The manufacturer's description: iWisoft Free Video Converter can fast convert videos between all popular formats like AVI, MPEG, WMV, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264/AVC, AVCHD, FLV, MKV, RM, MOV, 3GP, and audio MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, M4A, AAC, AC3, OGG. Directly convert video for playback on your PSP, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, Xbox, Zune, Creative Zen, Archos and other digital multimedia devices.