The title of this post is a German colloqialism that means “thoughts are free.” Millions of students in America are headed back to college to, hopefully, do a lot of free thought. Unfortunately, evil professors want proof that you thought and they want it to fill up 20 pages before next Wednesday. At this point a number of people settle down before a bloated, overpriced piece of software called Microsoft Office, and their thoughts are no longer free. You don’t have to use or buy Office. There are free and better alternatives, namely OpenOffice.org. Open Office offers all of the same productivity software needed to make Word files, Powerpoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets. It even has better support for foreign languages, which, when studying German is very important. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. For Mac users, there is an even better alternative based on OpenOffice, NeoOffice.