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So, what are our alternatives?

OpenOffice  This is a great suite , with the exception of email it contains all you need to replace office, some would say its even better (and faster) than office. It will handle word files, spread sheets , presentations. One of the best features? It can print to PDF natively ( get with the program Microsoft) 

It can be used on Windows, OSX and Linux Download

Iwork – This one is for OSX only, but wow. For a company that does not rely on office suites , they sure did a great job. The pages application (word) has a real wysiwyg interface. It acts as a real editor. The charting in numbers (excel) has all the OSX shiny parts. And I’ve heard that the presentation software is much better than powerpoint. What is one of the best features? You can get a family 3 license pack for $100. That is hard to compete with.

But enough of word processors and number crunchers, let’s get to the life blood of the corporate world, email. When it comes to replacing Outlook there are quite a few programs out there. 

Eudora  This is an old one , it has been around for a long time. It’s not bad , but i have not used it in quite some time.  What is interesting is that it actually has a server portion as well ( that is beyond the scope of this article) The clients have virus protection and spam protection built in, as well as anti-phishing support.

It will run in Windows or OSX Download

Thunderbird – By the same guys who brought you Firefox (Mozilla foundation). I love this email client, its light weight and fast, also there are plug-ins that will let you use a calendaring and not taking features that are present in outlook. Plugins are a huge benefit and very powerful , as they can make your email client do just about anything.

It will run on Windows,OSX, and Linux. Download

Evolution (also called Ximian evolution)  This is a great email client, It has pretty much all the features that outlook has, and is free. There are plugins that will let you connect directly to exchange servers (mapi plugins) , this client includes Contacts, Calendars, Memos, and Tasks. I have used this program all I love it, It really is Outlook without the bloat.

This program will run on Windows, OSX , and Linux 

Thats all for now, this is not intended to be bashing Microsoft, they make a lot of really great software. Competition is good for the industry, and I personally think that the office suite has become to bloated. So try your hand at these alternatives.

Sure you can get around your computer using the mouse to point and click on everything, but sometimes keyboard shortcuts are faster and easier.  One of the biggest benefits is that you’re hands don’t have to leave the keyboard.  Let’s say you’re working on writing a document and need to have some bold text inserted.  You could stop typing, move your hand to the mouse, move the mouse to the “B” icon and click it, move your hand back to the keyboard and type what you need then move back to the mouse to deselect bold (phew) or you can just hit Ctrl-b, type what you need in bold and then hit Ctrl-b to turn off bold.  Simple choice, right?

The biggest reason people don’t use keyboard shortcuts is that they don’t know what the shortcuts are.  The are hundreds of available shortcuts, some that you could use multiple times a day, some that are almost never used unless you’re in a specialized job (I almost never use macros ier

Below is a list of some of the more frequently used shortcuts that I’ve come across.  Most of them are easy to remember (ctrl-n for new, ctrl-o for open, etc) but a handful seem less obvious (ctrl-v for paste??).  Programmers choose the keys for shortcuts for one of two reasons, either to make it easy to remember or to group similar functions together.  The shortcuts for copy, cut, paste, and undo don’t seem to have correlation until you look down.  You can see that they’re all on the bottom left of the keyboard, right next to the ctrl key.  This was designed to make it easy to do all the editing with one hand while you kept your other hand on the mouse or in place on the keyboard.  Also many shortcuts have become system wide standards, so ctrl-c means copy in word, Firefox, Photoshop and every other program.  That means there’s actually a lot less to remember and a lot more to gain by taking a little while to remember these little time savers.

System wide shortcuts:

Ctrl-C copy to clipboard

Ctrl-V paste from clipboard

Ctrl-X cut to clipboard (delete the selection but save it in the clipboard for pasting later)

Ctrl-Z undo

Ctrl-P print

Ctrl-A select all

Ctrl-O open (select file to open prompt)

Ctrl-B set text to bold

Ctrl-I set text to italicized

F5 refresh page/window

Shift-Del delete selected object (file folder) without sending it to the recycling bin)

Shift+ L or R arrow select text one character at a time

Ctrl+ L or R arrow move cursor one word at a time (jump to beginning of previous/next word)

Shift+Ctrl + L or R arrow select text one word at a time

Windows:

Win-M minimize all windows

Win-D show desktop (press Win-D again to show your open windows again)

Win-R open run prompt

Win-E open new windows explorer window

Win-F or F3 open search window

Win-Pause open system properties window

F2 rename selected object

Ctrl-Shift-Esc open task manager

Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab cycle between open windows

For a full list of shortcuts for windows go to:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/126449

Firefox:

Alt-Home go to homepage

Ctrl-L select the address bar in order to type a url

Ctrl-T open new tab

Ctrl-W close tab/window

Ctrl-N open new window

Ctrl-F open search bar

Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab cycle between open tabs

Alt-L or R Arrow move forward and backwards in history

Ctrl- – or + change zoom

F11 full screen mode

For more shortcuts in Firefox go to:

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts

Outlook:

Ctrl-N open new contextually (i.e. if you’re in mail it will open a new message, in calendar new appointment, etc)

Ctrl-R reply to the currently selected message

Ctrl-Shift-R reply to all

Ctrl-F forward message

Hit the link below to see more shortcuts for Outlook:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HP012303961033.aspx

Word:

Most of the system wide shortcuts apply in Word, however here are a couple that are special and only used within Word.

Ctrl-[ or ] grow or shrink the font one point size at a time

Ctrl-L, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-R justify text to the left, canter and right respectively

Ctrl-Shift-8 show all hidden markings (spacing dots, paragraph marks, etc)

There’s a full list of shortcuts in Word here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938

Know any other good shortcuts or want to see more?  Let us know