Free alternative to Microsoft Excel for text to column

Not everyone needs a full blown spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel.
Some just need a spreadsheet program to do the basic stuff.
There are quite a few software's that are a real alternative to Excel.

Following are all free :
1. Gnumeric - This is a light weight stand alone alternative. Even has text to column functionality.
If you are stuck with Office starter version and need text to column functionality, you can  straight away get this. Very useful.

2. Open office Calc - This has much elaborate functionality.  One downside is, Calc alone cannot be downloaded. The entire office suite of openoffice has to be downloaded. You can install Calc alone though.

3. Byedesign -  Shareware.

Best free alternative to itunes to copy/add music to iPhone/Ipod

There are some well known software available that perform the task of allowing you  to add music to ipod/iphones - like Sharepod, Yamipod etc.

Those are pretty straight forward to use for iPods.
However for iphone there are very few options - most of these software's work fine with iPod only and not iPhone. Reason being design limitations, to changes to iOS itself with each new version among others

There are others that are published to work for iPhone but have been flagged by many to contain malware/spyware.

After considerable research, the alternative seems to be MediaMonkey

Although I knew it as a music player, music management software, it was a surprise to me that it could handle music transfer to the idevices as well.

Once you have mediamonkey installed and songs added to the library, simply right click and hit 'send to iPhone'. The song would get transferred.

Adv:
* Hassles free.Does the job.
* No malware worries (Well known popular software)
* Free

Disadv:
* Recently added playlist does not get populated in iPhone using this method.

You could also try with other music players software like Winamp for similar functionality.(I have not tried)