Ashampoo Office 2008 for cheap (or free…) (+ Edits)
Ashampoo Office 2008 is a “rebranded” version of SoftMaker Office 2008. We blogged about SoftMaker Office 2006 last year, and noted that the freeware 2006 version did an excellent job with word processing and spreadsheets but did not include a presentation (PowerPoint-like) application.
Ashampoo/SoftMaker Office 2008 corrects this with a very capable presentation application that can also utilize templates originally created for PowerPoint.
Softpedia posted an article earlier this spring detailing how to buy a copy of Ashampoo Office 2008 for $4.99. From that article, here is a direct link to Ashampoo’s offer.
The second link on the left side of that Ashampoo offer (the first black button) says “Download 30 days free full version HERE” Clicking that link in turn takes you to a CNET download.com page where the installation file can be downloaded and saved.
According to the Planete Beranger blog, A full license key to turn this 30-day version of Ashampoo Office 2008 into a full, non-time limited version can be obtained from Ashampoo by filling out this form using a valid email address.
Once you’ve obtained your key from Ashampoo via email, go ahead and run the installation file you downloaded from CNET download.com. Enter the name, email address, and serial number you received from Ashampoo in their reply email when prompted. After the installation is complete, download and install SoftMaker’s service pack from here, which will make sure your Ashampoo/SoftMaker Office 2008 installation is fully up-to-date.
Here’s how to make this very capable office suite save files in Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls, .ppt) formats automatically. You’ll need to do this in all three (TextMaker 2008, PlanMaker 2008, and Presentations 2008) programs.
After installation, click on Tools, Options… in the menu bar…
…and and then click on the Files tab at the top of the Options window.
The drop-down menu labeled Default file format (as shown above) allows the default file format to be set to your choice of Microsoft Office-compatible formats.
TextMaker documents will then be saved with a .doc file extension, PlanMaker spreadsheets will be saved with a .xls file extension, and Presentations will then be saved with a .ppt file extension automatically by default so they can be shared with Microsoft Office users.
Hopefully these links will all last. Either deal - free or five bucks - is pretty hard to beat for what you get. Take advantage of it before Ashampoo does away with it.
Edit 07/19/2009:
InfoWorld says:
The For Free On Internet blog also has a recent post about how to get Ashampoo Office 2008 for free.
Edit 10/12/2009:
Here’s a video review and tutorial for Ashampoo Office 2008 courtesy of infopackets.com:
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