Another summer has gone by, and students are setting off to college. When faced with the abundance of awesome tools available for students today, part of me wishes I were staking out a library carrel along with them.
If you're lucky enough to be a student in this golden age of tech, don't miss these great finds. Most of them are free, and all of them are bound to make the start of the new school year smoother than the last.
LibreOffice
For college students, the old "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic" morphs into writing papers, doing basic stats, and creating presentations (and yes, still lots of reading). No matter what you're studying or where, you're going to have to perform these tasks from time to time. Even with student discounts, Microsoft Office Suite can cost anywhere between $80 and $140. But if you think there's no alternative, you have a little research to do.
LibreOffice Writer includes most Microsoft Word features, including track changes and the formatting brush.
With its powerful Writer, Calc, and Impress programs, LibreOffice 4 offers a free and capable alternative to Microsoft's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. LibreOffice covers almost every feature you'll find in Microsoft's tools, and it can open and save as any Microsoft document with a minimal learning curve. LibreOffice's free suite also includes Base (an Access alternative), Draw, and Math.
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