The Archbishop Lanfranc School

You do not need to break the bank to load your machine up with free software and there is now an increasing range of online software that you can access and use from any computer or location.

Free software downloads

• OpenOffice
  http://www.openoffice.org/
  is a complete suite of wordprocessing, spreadsheet, presntation graphics and database applications. It can open any Microsoft Office file and you can save it in Microsoft Office format so it can used in school
• OxygenOffice Professional
  http://www.download.com/OxygenOffice-Professional/3000-2064_4-10758848.html
  is an add on to OpenOffice including graphics, templates and fonts
• Free Serif
  http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/
  We use the full range of Serif products and they offer older versions for free. If you want an uptodate version these can be purchased via the school.
• Google Sketchup
  http://sketchup.google.com/product/gsu.html
  3d graphics tool.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
  http://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/
  An absolute must have. We will be using .pdf format files extensively in the future so make sure this is installed.

Online software

In the next few years we are all likely to switch to accessing some applications online when the internet speeds up. These are alternatives to the above.

• ThinkFree
  http://www.thinkfree.com/
  ThinkFree is a free online suite which bears a striking resemblance to the Microsoft Office and has received glowing reviews all round. It includes the equivalents of Word, Excel & Powerpoint
• Google Docs
  http://docs.google.com/
  This is the application suite which is worrying Microsoft. Again it has Microsoft Office equivalents which integrate nicely into a whole range of Google applications. We will be using Google Mail with all students so you might want to try this out.