Some Free Stuff
Fortunately there are still some people out there who are not driving large profits for their shareholders, and are providing everyday useful software that you can download and install.
Did you know it is possible to install free software on a laptop/ desktop computer that gives you the equivalent functionality to Microsoft Office including email?
It is also generally not as processor intensive as MS Office as well, so this means you can use an older PC and squeeze more life out of it.
You don’t need to do all of the things below, so read through first, you can also try the Open Office apps on your existing platform to see if they are right for you (and remove them if they are not).
Operating Systems
If you have a really old computer that is destined for the scrap heap but are also short of funds, find a local volunteer who is IT literate (you don’t have to be an expert, but some knowledge is useful). Go to the following link and download and install Ubuntu Linux. This is an operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP, Windoze 8.1, are all operating systems). This is the code used to get you started if you want to just install on old hardware. Do bear in mind that if you are installing on old hardware, you need the 32 bit version of the operating system.
Once you have Ubuntu installed you can add in Open Office which will give you a set of applications similar to MS Office.
Free Office for Windows and Mac O/S X
If you want to explore on an existing (Windows) platform then you can go to one of the sites listed below and download Open Office which will give you access to a word processor, presentation software and a spreadsheet. There may be other applications in there as well.
Try:
Apache Open Office
Libre Open Office
You may be curious if you can open up documents created in MS office. You generally can, but if you cannot, then MS Office offers other saving formats such as RTF (Rich Text Format) which should be universally acceptable across most platforms.
Fress Office for MAC O/S X
There is even a version for old MAC computers
Try:
Email Application
The easiest way to do this is through a web browser using webmail. All of you hosting with me have this available if I am providing you with email as well.
However if you want a local windows based email client then you can try Thunderbird from Mozilla (The same group that provides the web browser; Firefox).
You can get Thunderbird from here. Also see this article for more details on Thunderbird.