An alternate Office suite is here, if you want one

02nd September 2019
An alternate Office suite is here, if you want one

WPS Office 2020, is a robust multi-platform office suite, for those  who want  to look beyond Microsoft
By Anand Parthasarathy
September 2 2019: After MS Office what? It may be time to ask that question because  Microsoft  seems  to be tapering off its  install-once- and-use  license  for  its flagship  Office Suite. It is bending on customers to opt instead for the Office 365 online version where you have to pay monthly  to  access the suite through an Internet connection only.  This is a route that  many lay users like you and me,  neither like, nor can afford.  We would love to shift to  an alternative where you get a licence for perpetuity  and can shift from desktop to laptop or phone, without paying again and again.
Problem: Microsoft's  formats -- Doc for   word  documents, PowerPoint for presentation and Excel for spreadsheets  have become global standards -- and we need to work with them.
Last week I  was introduced to an alternative where I could have my cake and eat it too --  keep working in these MS formats, but use an office suite that does not require a subscription mode. It is called  WPS  Office  and it  comes from a Chinese software company called Kingsoft.  In fact, if you own a mobile phone of Chinese origin like Vivo or Oppo, the chances are you are already  using the factory-installed WPS. The name is  an acronym for Word-Presentation-Spreadsheet.  Now, it is available in the 2020 edition   for portable Android and   Windows  desktop  operating systems:  the Apple Mac version was launched  last week.
What's more,  it is both legal and free in downloadable versions that  take up very little memory -- just 110 MB.  Most of us can  manage with the free functions  and  may not need to go for the  premium version  with many  advanced features, which costs  around $ 30/ year or the SMB version which can be bought  for a one- time price of around $ 80 -- that is Rs 6000 equivalent. 
WPS has a fourth pillar other than word, presentation and spreadsheet:  PDF : very useful since    this  has become is a de facto document standard, but hitherto we had  to download a separate Adobe utility  for that.
My week or so, with WPS Office has been a smooth experience  -- with many little tools and tricks that I didn't find in MS, with the attraction that I could  glide between all four utilities in a single view. 
At the WPS India launch event in Delhi last week, I met a veteran  IT trainer  who has   been coaching  students in all  major office tools -- Bangalore-based Vijay Perepa, co-founder  of  A meet Z Technologies -- and he says: If you want to use legal office software and   are looking for something other than the Microsoft flagship, the best bet today is WPS.