Well, due to popular demand, I am following up my That Office Suite? article with some helpful links for those who are really interested in not having to buy a full (or even partial) office suite or just do not believe that something free could be even near as good as Microsoft Office :)Â Following that is a little bit of how politics are involved in the Office Suite playoff (exactly what I was saying in my That Office Suite? article)
Here are some links to some reviews of OpenOffice:
This is one of the first that really got me started in actually using OpenOffice. There are interesting comments as well:
NewForge – OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Word
Here is another one. I did not realize, until today, that nonprofits (not for commercial or personal use) could get MS Office for $20 but that does not mean it will not change in the future. I believe that this may be just a hook to be sure this sector is dependant on MS Office and then make a price switch:
TechSoup – Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org
There are may other articles like this, just do a search in Yahoo or Google for: OpenOffice Microsoft “Office Suite” compare
Now on to the politics. I just read that the Massachusetts state legislature had hearings on moving to OpenOffice from MS Office. I guess that the Massachusetts Information Technology Division set state policy that stating that the state’s executive branch must save documents in “open” format, not controlled by one company (like MS Word documents). Thus ruling out Word’s “.doc” and Excel’s “.xls” formats.
It looks like that because the Republican Governor backs the plan, all the Democrats are against using OpenOffice as a FREE replacement for using open document standards. Why would any government want to replace ageing Microsoft products with free software that looks and feels almost the same and, in general, seems to have better functionality when you can upgrade MS Office for at least $100 per install?
That is what the Democrats in this case seem to be saying. I guess if the people are giving us money, we must spend it and even if we do not have the money, lets spend it and get it from the tax payer next year. Of course if the good idea is not your party’s good idea, it is not a good idea. NOTE – At times the Republicans do similar. This political rivalry is very unproductive and I could probably write a book on it but that will be in another life.
