AS the clerk at Circuit City rang up my purchase of a new notebook computer last month, she started her up-selling.

Padded bag? No. Security lock? No. Windows Office?

For someone who processes words for a living, Microsoft’s software would seem to be an indispensable tool. But when one of the least expensive versions of Office costs $150, or 25 percent of the price of my new notebook, I needed an alternative.

Google let me slip Microsoft’s monopoly. Its Google Docs is a free suite of office applications. You can find it at docs.google.com. It works just like Office, but you use it online. The software that makes it work isn’t on your computer, but on one of Google’s.

You use the word processor just like Word, or I should say, the version you might remember from the early 1990s, before Microsoft added all the bells and whistles that you never need.