Gobe Productive: A lightweight alternative to MS Office

Filed under: Business, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Commercial

Gobe Productive: A lightweight alternative to MS Office

by Ian Dumych Jan 24th 2008

When it comes to office software, these days it seems like the only choice one has is to either buy Microsoft Office or Star Office, or download OpenOffice. While MS Office and Star/Open Office have many features that distinguish them from each other, they also have one thing in common: bloat.

Look out for the underdog. At a svelte sixteen megabytes, Gobe Productive can do most anything that the big two can do, but with less of the loading time and lag. As opposed to the common office "suite", Gobe is a single, well integrated application that is capable of dealing with documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings. Of course, what good is all that without file compatibility? Worry not, it speaks fluent Microsoft.

Gobe Productive is available for download as a 30 day trial for Windows, and a new version with support for Linux and Mac OS X is in the works.

Tags: office suites, OfficeSuites

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gardiner Westbound said 8:39AM on 1-24-2008

I solved the MS Office problem by sticking with Office 2000. It does everything I want. At 50 megabytes it's not skinny, but it loads reasonably quickly.

Geir said 9:41AM on 1-24-2008

Well, there's IBM Lotus Symphony as well...
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa

Yayaja said 11:08AM on 1-24-2008

30 day trials are great, but $49.95 for the full version? If you are right this is just a stripped and lightened version of something that is available for free, so i don't see why this should cost anything, much less 50 bucks.

Aalaap said 12:40PM on 1-24-2008

Google Docs?

harmx said 12:52PM on 1-24-2008

I used to use this on my favourite BeOS! I think I still got a coupon for a free linux port they promised (when it became available); that was now many years ago.

Still, good to see it though!

Jonathan Harford said 2:14PM on 1-24-2008

Why would I pay $50 for something that's been released under the GPL?

Supposedly.

michael said 12:04AM on 1-25-2008

Why would anybody buy a knockoff copy of Office?

Just get the real thing. It's practically blows all the other office suites out of the water.

mtelesha said 12:14AM on 1-27-2008

I prefer Abiword. Its the best light weight word processor when you don't have access to Google Docs. www.abisource.com

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters