Microsoft Word

[StrawberryDream]

I need word on my computer but all I see is Office and you have to pay monthly. I normally use Google Drive but I need Word for school sometimes. Can anyone help me? I have a Windows 8 computer.

[Lilias]

OpenOffice is free and does the same job as the Microsoft suite.

[BAMF]

+1 to Lilas - OpenOffice is great. And the files are saved in the same way, so if you send in an assignment via e-mail to your professor that you wrote in OpenOffice, they are able to open it in Word.

[Valthazar]

Open Office is good, but just remember to save it as .doc/.docx and not .odt in the "Save As" menu.  I have no issues when I receive .odt files, but some people less familiar with computers have trouble opening these files in Word (either have a very old version of Word, or don't have the necessary add-on, etc.). 

Also, check with your campus bookstore, there is a very good chance you can buy MS Word for $10-15 dollars through your college.

[consortium11]

As well as OpenOffice there's also LibreOffice; for the vast majority of word processing you'll barely notice a difference between the two but Libre is updated somewhat more frequently and has a number of functions I find useful.

Both give you pretty much all the functionality of Microsoft Office (especially the word processing) but for free. As Valthazar mentions you'll need to make sure you do a "save as" and change the file type to .doc/.docx if you want people who use Word to be able to display your files but otherwise there's no real drawbacks.

The change of Microsoft Office to a subscription format is known as Office 365 and follows a trend within software licensing to move to a recurring rather than one-off payment model. I don't have access to the US site but on the UK one you can still buy office as a one-off (the basic version containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote is £110). Perhaps of more use to you may be Office Online; it's an online Microsoft Office suite that's free; although I don't use it so I can't attest to its usability.

As you're a student Valthazar's mention of buying Word through your college is a good option to look at. Alternatively Microsoft also offer a student version of Office 365 (at least in the UK) which gives you four years of a full Office Suite (and some other benefits) for £60.