Despite what you’ve heard, the online version of Office 2010 announced by Microsoft earlier this week won’t be free to corporate users, and isn’t a threat to the likes of Google, Adobe, or even Zoho, which sells online productivity software to small and medium-sized businesses.

There’s no question computers make our lives easier, especially with all the productivity tools available today. Let’s take a look at how some of these apps can help you streamline your work and stay organized while you get things done.

For productivity, Linux can compete with Windows and Mac as Linux has a great set of productivity applications.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 21 high quality Linux productivity tools. Hopefully, there will be something of interest for anyone who wishes to organise their daily life.

Tools have been rebuilt to run on more Linux platforms.

If you’re a small business owner, you probably don’t need all the bells and whistles of a full-fledged customer relationship management (CRM) application, but you still do need a solid platform from which to automate common business tasks such as managing materials and generating invoices, ideally at little cost. Then Kraft is a great choice.

The Microsoft Office productivity suite has risen to become the dominant application of its type for business IT management. But there are open source office productivity suites available that may provide a suitable alternative to Office.

If Ubuntu Linux had not won me over yet then it certainly has now. Ubuntu Netbook Remix is a fantastic set of tools for running Linux on small screens and boosting productivity in a limited workspace.

Despite the wealth of free applications out there, many small business owners continue to spend an inordinate amount of their all-too-scarce resources on software. Microsoft Office 2010? That'll be $499.99 -- or $279.99 if you can do without the Professional version. QuickBooks 2010? $159.95 or more. Adobe PhotoShop CS5? A whopping $699.