May 6, 2005

Can You Stop Using Microsoft Office?

Over the years, there's been an up and down chorus of attention about using OpenOffice, the free or low cost (it depends on where you get it from) office productivity suite containing a database, word processor and other tools.

Microsoft Office is expensive for many businesses, however, it's used by so many that it's become a common business tool. An entire industry of information and knowledge management resources are wrapped around Microsoft Office.

For those who want to save money, or for other reasons, want an alternative to Microsoft Office, The Washington Post writes that OpenOffice could be a good alternative. Remember, Corel's Word Perfect is also a VERY good option.

The Washington Post writes It's weird how things can come back to bite you. Microsoft Corp. killed off the competition for office software suites and became a de facto monopoly in the area, with what result? The competition is back and, this time, it's free!

OpenOffice is the fruit of a collaboration between Sun Microsystems and volunteer programmers around the world. Sun bought a German company in 1999 to get office software to bundle with its computers but figured that it wasn't going to make big bucks selling the software to a wider market because of Microsoft's grip. So it released portions of the code to the public. It probably didn't hurt that archrival Microsoft loathes the idea of free software.

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