If you’re just in the process of becoming a consultant, you may be looking to bootstrap your business. However, to get going, you’ll probably need some sort of office productivity suite, like Microsoft Office. Despite what you might think, you don’t need to shell out hundreds of dollars for a package. You can use OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is opensource software. You can download the entire suite from the official OpenOffice site and gain access to programs compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel and so on. However, if you may prefer to pay around $40 for something like OpenOffice with updates and support. That way, if you run into problems or bugs, you’ll have help.