Don't want to pay for Office? Then don't.

You may have heard that the pricing and licensing for Office 2013 and Office 365 is a bit hard to swallow. But nobody is talking about Microsoft's free alternative: Office Web Apps.

Office Web Apps are the least talked about product that Microsoft put out. It includes the exact same programs you'd get in Office Home & Student 2010 or 2013: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. For free. Including 7GB of SkyDrive storage.

From the start, comparing feature lists between the web version and the full version, you're missing the point. People choose a free online productivity suite because it's free and it can be used on any PC or Mac (and some mobile devices) with a modern web browser.

The Office Web Apps include the ribbon interface, so a document in the Word Web App feels like you're running regular Word. You have to look closely to see that some features are missing.

Every Office Web App supports simultaneous editing. If you share a document with someone from a free SkyDrive account, anyone with edit permissions can work on that document simultaneously, with your changes showing up nearly in real time.

If you go to Office.com, you won't even see that Office Web Apps are available. But just click My Office and sign in with a Microsoft account (such as email at Outlook.com) and there you are.