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SoftMaker Office NX Home was available as a giveaway on July 2, 2019!
SoftMaker Office NX Home for Windows is the No. 1 alternative to Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Plus, it’s easier to use and highly reliable. The software offers everything you’d expect from a professional office suite. Thanks to the native use of the file formats DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, it offers seamless compatibility with Microsoft Office. The resource-friendly system requirements allow a quick workflow with nearly any hardware setup. The office suite can be installed to a USB flash drive so that it can be used on any PC without installation.
Please note: the program includes a 6 month license! Only for the new users - you won't be able to extend the activation period with a new free product key if you already took advantage of the previous GOTD offer. The program archive includes ONLY readme file with the download and registration instructions to follow!
Windows 7/ 8/ 10, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 or newer; Mac; Linux
4 KB
$17.94
What does SoftMaker Office use for macros. Did quick review of the site and did not see macros mentioned. Any office suit without macro functionality is kind of useless for me.
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Another pretty good free package comes from ssuitesoft.com (there are multiple versions, all free). It's somewhat similar to this one, in that it is relatively lightweight and, while it covers the basics well, is not really competitive with MS Office or LibreOffice in features. My primary interest is in advanced Excel usage, and not even LibreOffice matches Excel for analytic tasks; the free or low-cost packages are not in the same league. As for WPS, I wouldn't touch it. Too many complaints from users about bugs, lack of functionality, and lack of support.
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SoftMaker is a 30 year old company developing office & PDF apps & fonts. Their Office suite is one of the best -- some feel The best -- alternatives to Microsoft Office. It's also sold with Ashampoo branding. You can sometimes pick up the Ashampoo branded version for less that $20 during one of their frequent sales -- after that SoftMaker will offer upgrade sales when there's a new version, usually in my experience for around $20. SoftMaker also has excellent Android versions of their office apps. And they have a free version too -- it lacks some of the features of the paid version, and may be based on an earlier version of SoftMaker Office, rather than the latest, current version.
TechRadar has a decent article listing the best, free office apps, including SoftMaker's:
techradar[.]com/best/free-office-software
The only caution I'd mention is regarding WPS Office, and it's really a Big Maybe right now... NOT getting anywhere near political topics, the US has been black listing an increasing number of Chinese tech companies, and WPS is Chinese. *IF* that happened, they wouldn't be able to get support etc. from Microsoft for future Windows updates.
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I agree about WPS Office. I installed it (in the free version), and it immediately began doing some suspicious things related to the cloud, and to my personal data.
It's also too close to Microsoft Office for comfort. I really feels as if it were pirated.
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Been Using Open Office Free For Years Enough Said!
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I Agree Ron and I have never had a problem using open office alongside people who have Microsoft office my documents seen to open fine for the Microsoft office users. Open Office works for me and it's free for life. For me 6 months is useless.
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Somethings broke. All I get is a readme.txt file and no package to unzip.
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Doug, Same here... just the .txt file on zip
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Doug, Read the recipe!
Please note: the program includes a 6 month license! Only for the new users - you won't be able to extend the activation period with a new free product key if you already took advantage of the previous GOTD offer. The program archive includes ONLY readme file with the download and registration instructions to follow!
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It is a 6 month licence. I checked the prices if you wish to purchase.
What is the point when the prices are not much different from the real thing Microsoft Office? In addition please note that the so-called has only TextMaker, PlanMaker, Presentations, BasicMaker, Extended Thunderbird.
Microsoft Office Professional has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher, and Access. But by far the most important thing is if you are already familiar with MsOffice, you do not need to relearn all over again, some clone software that is not cheap at all.
Reliability and Usability are very important.
Spend $40 more and get the real thing.
And we are not even talking about bulk discounts given by Microsoft to big companies and government departments.
With student / academic discounts on MsOffice, there is no reason to even consider the clones (that are NOT cheap).
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ricohflex,
i did noticed 6month. Often I may not use within 6 month or year if so maybe once or twice. In that case to eliminate stress I will skip this giveaway.
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ricohflex,
"I checked the prices if you wish to purchase. What is the point when the prices are not much different from the real thing Microsoft Office?"
There are different versions of Microsoft's Office. They've been slowly trying to phase out the stand-alone product that you pay for once & own. You can often get it cheaper -- SCDKey sells keys for around $40 I think -- but lots of people complain about hassles like frequent de-activation requiring a reinstall etc. regardless where you buy it. Office 365 is usually on sale [at least in the US] only in November, with 1 year personal [1 user] licenses for around $30 & family [6 user] for around $50.
There are people setting up biz or academic servers with Office 365 corporate or academic licenses, then selling alleged 1 year licenses for extremely cheap prices on eBay. You don't actually get a license of any sort -- basically they just add you to their list of corp. or edu PCs, and licensing & verification happens via their servers. And it works OK until they decide to sell your seat to someone else, or take their profits & shut down the server(s) or whatever. You have zero protection in that case. OTOH you're not out a lot of money.
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I used Ashampoo Office Free for quite awhile and loved it. Then one day, it started giving an error message whenever I tried to save something. Sadly, I could not figure it out. I first tried uninstalling it and reinstalling but the error continued. So I then gave Softmaker Free a try but it gave the same error when saving. I am thinking it is something in the registry that Ashampoo put and remained after uninstalling, even though I use an in/unstaller program, and that is why both generate the same error since both are by Ashampoo.
Unable to decipher the issue with those, I moved on and , finding LibreOffice to be a resource hog, I am now using Apache OpenOffice. I like that it is all self-contained in one icon/GUI as opposed to a different one for each component. There are a few quirks, like not being able to right click and paste into a spreadsheet and having to use ctrl+v, but otherwise so far so good. If this becomes problematic, I will go back to WPS.
Not really much information on today's offering, just sharing my experiences should it help anyone.
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TK,
It was about a year ago and I do not recall the exact wording of the error message. I tried figuring it out at the time but could not. The OS was Win10Home x64 before and after the error, though which version update I am unsure. I never had any trouble saving files from any other software but these. I gave it another try a few months ago and installed Ashampoo Office Free once again but got the same saving error. That is when I moved to Apache.
Thank you for the effort and reply, much appreciated.
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Well designed office suite with really good compatibility with MS Office - it's far better at this than OpenOffice or LibreOffice plus light and lightning-fast, compared to both.
No ads, no risk of spyware, no constant connecting with unknown servers as in WPS Office case (I had only experiences with WPS from few years ago, and I almost immediately uninstalled it then, perhaps WPSO has been improved since, but I don't need or want to test it again, and I'm hard to blame for that).
I definitely prefer non-subscription license however.
For pre-7 versions of Windows, there's previous standard version (SoftMakerOffice 2016) available for free: softmaker.*de*/reg/ofw16free_en.htm (delete asterisks when copy-pasting). Note: it's good for Win 7, 8 & 10 too.
It's worth noted that the standard version of SoftMakerOffice 2018, i.e. lifetime license, not a subscription, and not an online limited (as in the case of pathetic MSO 365 educational free), but full offline version - is totally free for educational institutions (schools, universities, etc.) and for their teachers.
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You might like to try WPS Office which I've used instead of Microsoft Office for some years. It used to have popup advertising but this seems to have disappeared with a redesigned that occurred recently. It as tabs which I find really useful when working on a number of documents at the same time. Nice simple and modern design which took a short time to get used to after the previous versions which were more like early versions of Word.
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What a waste of time, when OpenOffice, LibreOffice do the same thing, for free... it is even based on the same platform -
If, after 6 months, you've got to pay to use it, then you might as well use Microsoft Office and have the real deal too - it's cheaper!
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Snakeman, Where did you get the MS Office 2007? I need something simple to log my media files , any suggestions? Anything besides open, id love to have MS,,thank you :-)
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daryl ,
"... OpenOffice, LibreOffice do the same thing..."
Or Google Docs, or Microsoft's free web version of Office, or SoftMaker Office Free etc. But they all work a bit differently, and many people prefer one or another.
"If, after 6 months, you've got to pay to use it, then you might as well use Microsoft Office and have the real deal too - it's cheaper!"
A one year subscription for SoftMaker Office NX for 5 users costs $29.90. A one year subscription to Office 365 for 6 users costs ~$100 [$50 during sales in November], making Office 365 more expensive whenever you buy your license. You are correct for the stand alone [pay once] versions, since I've seen keys at SCDKey for example for ~$40 for Microsoft Office, v.s. $70 for SoftMaker Standard. However that's SoftMaker list price -- you can get it on sale cheaper, especially if you go with the Ashampoo branded version.
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This is the NX version which is a subscription version, and a six month license for it. You'll get all updates and upgrades for six months or as long as you subscribe. The same company offers SoftMaker FreeOffice at www.freeoffice.com. That is totally free. NX has a few more features. SoftMaker also has the 2018 version to pay for, which is not a subscription version, but has any updates if needed, but no upgrades.
If you get this NX version, if you do not want to subscribe after six months, get the free version or the one-time-pay 2018 version, and there may be a 2019 or 2020 one-time-pay version by then.
I highly recommend this. It is better than LibreOffice. I paid for an earlier version. The free version is great too. If you're in doubt, try the FreeOffice version right now. It is especially great for low power laptops, and great for everything.
Mostly the free version can open DOCX and XLSX and PPTX but cannot save in those X versions, it can only save the previous non-X format versions. NX can save in the X versions.
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J, Softmaker Free Office 2018 does allow you to save a document as type "Microsoft Word 2007-2016 (*.docx)" and a spreadsheet as type "Microsoft Excel 2007-2016 (*.xlsx).
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I own both the free version, Free Office, and the paid-for once and for all, Soft Maker Office Standard. I recommend both. It's probably the best alternative to Microsoft Office.
Free Office is already quite powerful. Soft Maker Office Standard adds many useful extra features. Neither are as powerful as Microsoft Office or, probably, Libre Office.
But contrary to all the cookie-cutter comments the Internet is awash with, Libre Office is not the miracle solution. This program, whatever the version you choose, is far better. Software is not only a matter of quantity. Quality of design is paramount.
What I advise is : take advantage of the present offer to test the program. Be aware the version offered here is the subscription-based one. It has the same set of features as Soft Maker Office Standard.
Then, after 6 months of testing, if you like the program, you have 3 choices :
- Buy the subscription, and enjoy the full set of features for as long as you subscribe.
- Revert to the free version, Free Office. It might be just what you need. It's a full-fledged program.
- Buy the single-payment version, Soft Maker Office Standard. Personally, I don't buy subscription-based software. Fortunately, this publisher gives you the choice.
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What's the point in only having a programme for 6 months then have to uninstall it ?
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What happens after 6 months?
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John, Yeah, you can do that, but Libre Office is a hog compared to SoftMaker or AShampoo's office suites.
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Sam Richmond, get free Softmaker Office 2016 Standard at http://www.softmaker.de/reg/ofw16free_en.htm and some fonts http://www.softmaker.de/reg/freeartnouveaufonts_en.htm
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