Customer Reviews

ThinkFree Office

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Excluding email and Internet browser software, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software is probably the most needed or used on the average personal computer. Enter ThinkFree Office, a Java-based office suite that takes care of almost any "office software" task the average computer user will need.

ThinkFree Office is comprised of "ThinkFree Write," a 'Word' like word processor, "ThinkFree Calc," an 'Excel' like spreadsheet application, "ThinkFree Show," which is very similar to 'PowerPoint,' and "ThinkFree Folders," a handy file manager application.

In my experience ThinkFree Office has been a powerful, easy to learn package that incorporates a well designed user interface and a majority of the most important features of MS Office. The toolbars and functional layout in ThinkFree Office are highly inspired by the Microsoft Office suite, and you'll feel nearly at home if you've used Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. ThinkFree Office can open and save the most common Word, Excel, and PowerPoint file formats, and it also makes a great HTML editor, clean and free of the Microsoft "gunk" tags that accompany a "Word" file saved as HTML.

The help files in ThinkFree Office are clear and easy to follow for the most part, but could be improved with more detail. The interface is easy to manage and there are pop-up descriptors for each item in the program's visible anatomy, and the icons are similar to other application's "standard" icons, so it's easy to determine what each toolbar item or button will do.

For all of its features and ease of use, ThinkFree Office is a bargain at [the price]. The fact that ThinkFree Office is written in Java, in my opinion, offers more advantages than disadvantages to the end user. For example, ThinkFree Office is available for nearly every significant computer platform, so it's a simple matter to work on or exchange files between Macintosh, Linux, Windows, etc. A particular feature that makes ThinkFree Office stand out is something called a "CyberDrive," which is a secure online file storage space that makes it easy to mirror files written to a local drive, or to create secure online backups. When you purchase ThinkFree Office you are given 20 MB of "CyberDrive" space free, for 1 year, and up to a gigabyte of space can be purchased, at an additional cost. This is a good idea, and is as easy to use as saving any file on a local drive. I expect this idea will catch on with other software publishers, and it will become a popular feature. As someone who works both at home and at an office I have found the CyberDrive to be really useful.

I am very satisfied with my purchase of ThinkFree Office. I feel as though I've been given a lot of value for the money, and I feel better supporting a worthy smaller company than the MS juggernaut for my "office" needs. If you've been waiting for a powerful cross-platform MS Office alternative, I would suggest giving ThinkFree Office seriouis consideration.

I bought the item used, so I paid virtually nothing for it. Under those conditions, I'd have to say I'm satisfied with it. But I would not recommend spending any more than you're willing to waste on an annoying, slim-featured, slow and unreliable application.

Sometimes it will open an MS document. Sometimes it won't. Because it's java based you need to make sure all your file and folder names, in the entire document hierarchy, follow rigid file-naming requirements. No spaces, no slashes, no special characters, and so on. Even when opening a properly-named document at the root level of your hard-drive, however, at times the document inexplicably opens up as a blank page. A day or two later, the same document might open perfectly. This happens not only with documents translated from MS apps, but with documents actually created in Thinkfree Office itself.

The interface and features are more those of an html editor than a word processor, or spreadsheet, or slideshow creator.

Although it can be used to create passable alternatives to MS documents, it has very few features of the actual MS programs. Expect problems and inconsistencies if transfering files between Thinkfree and MS Office users. The look and even the data may change in inexplicable ways.

It is extremely slow. When you open a document, it will seem as if the computer or the application may have hung up or failed. Even more confusing, you can navigate to the open dialog while the application is in the middle of trying to open a document, so it seems for all the world like the document is not responding. But just keep waiting ... eventually the program will get around to making an attempt at opening the document. If you're lucky, you might actually get a usable document in a minute or two. Or maybe a blank page. You can take bets while you're waiting, if you want to make it interesting.

In short, purchase this if you can deal with the annoyances and unreliability. It is useful for trying to open the occasional email attachment. But be aware that this is definitely not a professional-grade software package capable of handling business needs.

I bought Mac version [my platform os9.2, 640Mb on iBook]

It doesn't work, Period. Can't open anything.
Tech support doesn't exist. You get one acknowledgement
advising all the usual stuff that you've already tried, then
no more responses.

Try icWord -- trial ver -- that works.

AND, Amazon edited my review of it.
What bums !

I just downloaded and installed the trial version. First it hanged on installation but after killing the process and installing again succedded. I do not mind that. But the main thing is the software is excellent, all useful features of word and excel are there. Price is comfortably cheap (Below $50). Cyber drive is a wonderful idea.

In search of a Microsoft alternative... purchased ThinkFree office. Loaded it and tried to run it. It locked up my PC requiring the use of taskmaster to free it up. I am running XP on a new Dell Dimension with 1 gig of ram - all other programs run flawlessly. Disapointing