In case you haven’t heard, Office 2010 is in production and slated for release early next year. I was interested to read that there is a web-based version planned. I suppose Microsoft has finally heard about Cloud Computing.
So here we go again. How much will this upgrade cost, not only in cold, hard cash but in headaches as we work out and around the inevitable bugs? Well for me, it’s not going to cost me a thing. Nope – nuthin’, zero, zilch.
I’m opting out.
I’m making the switch to Open Office available for the astronomical price of free. Yep, you heard me right – free but worth a lot! OpenOffice is open source software and is backed by some powerhouses, primarily Sun Microsystems. These folks are serious and they have created an exceptional response to MS Office. OpenOffice has a word processing application that replaces MS Word, a spreadsheet application to replace Excel, a presentation application that replaces Power Point, a database application that replaces Access and more.
OpenOffice works on all common computers so I can send files to clients using Mac with no problem. It stores data in an international open format which means I can easily open all of my old MS Office documents. It also means that my clients can open the files I send them and the formatting is retained.
I’ve had no problem switching and have yet to find something that MS Office has that OpenOffice doesn’t. It’s user friendly and is similar enough to MS Office that I’ve been able to find my way around easily. Plus, there’s a great community at OpenOffice.org to help me out if necessary.
I’ve talked about Google docs before and if you are highly mobile it’s a great option. OpenOffice is more user friendly and more powerful so I’m using the two together and it seems to be working very well.
Check out OpenOffice’s About Page if you need further convincing:
OpenOffice.org’s Mission Statement is…
To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.
The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Sun Microsystems, which is the primary contributor of code to the Project. Our other major corporate contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, and Google. Additionally over 450,000 people from nearly every curve of the globe have joined this Project with the idea of creating the best possible office suite that all can use. This is the essence of an “open source.” community!
Indeed, community is the essence of the Internet and something I think Microsoft has forgotten.
