At home on a laptop, using a tablet in a bus or tapping a smartphone in a cafe: Texts, spreadsheets and presentations no longer have to be worked on from the office only. Lars Budde from German magazine t3n says there are now decent office software packages for every platform. But which one is best for you?
"Users basically have five large suites to choose from: Office 365, Apple's iWork, SoftMaker Office, LibreOffice and OpenOffice," says Budde. Most people know Microsoft's offering from school, university or work.
"Microsoft Office is available for Windows and Mac OS X as well as in apps for iOS and Android," says Dieter Brors from German computer magazine c't. It's convenient but also costly, seeing as Microsoft has switched to a subscription model for its office software.
Home use for a year will cost around 100 euros (112 dollars) and the software can be installed on up to five computers.
"Office 365 and the subscription are particularly worthwhile when one wants to install the software on multiple computers in a household and make use of the five available licences," says Brors.
But if someone is going to be working on a smartphone rather than a PC, the subscription isn't worth it and they should consider the free alternatives instead, according to Budde.
MS Office functions independently of any particular operating system.
"In addition, Microsoft is the creator of the most common formats, including .docx for Word and .xlsx for Excel," Budde says.
Apple's iWork also can perform all essential business tasks on a computer, smartphone or tablet.
"Users of newer iPhones, iPads and Macs receive the iWork suite with it for free, including the word processor Pages and the spreadsheet application Numbers," says Martin Reitbauer from Austria's Smartphone Magazin.
The iWork apps on the iPhone and iPad can "open Microsoft documents but don't always display the contents faithfully," says Dieter Brors. For that reason he recommends installing Microsoft's Office apps on the iPhone and iPad if you're going to be using Word, Excel or PowerPoint.
WPS Office and Office-Suite Free from Mobisystems are popular alternatives, Reitbauer says. There are also free office software suites for Android devices. "Android users can use the cloud-based Google Drive apps such as Google Docs or Google Spreadsheets and also use them on the desktop or laptop via a browser," Reitbauer says.
On Android smartphones, Dieter Brors recommends the apps TextMaker Mobile, PlanMaker Mobile and Presentations Mobile. They can be used to work on Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.
"The range of functions is not nearly as large as on fully fledged office programmes, but they're sufficient for reading and minor corrections," he says. For a more powerful app for a tablet, Brors recommends the HD version of SoftMaker Office Mobile.
But who needs which office suite?
For most users it's not necessary to compare the functions of the various programmes too minutely, Lars Budde says.
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