Most home PC users don’t need Microsoft Office
One of the mysteries of life is why so many people waste their money buying expensive software that they don’t understand and barely use. A case in point is Microsoft Office. There is no question that it has a lot of features and is a versatile and powerful program. But I doubt that most ordinary computer users even know of the existence of most of what’s in Office, let alone actually use all the features. A standing joke in Office lore is that, whenever Microsoft asks users what they would like in the next version, the majority of suggestions are for features already present in Office.
There are a number of alternatives that make more sense for most home PC owners and for many small businesses. For home users, Microsoft itself offers the program Microsoft Works. But a better option may be the free program Open Office. This is a full-fledged suite and is compatible with various Microsoft file formats. InfoWorld has a preview of the new upcoming version and says that OpenOffice 3.0 will be a plausible challenger to Microsoft Office.
Another option is IBM Lotus Symphony. According to CNET:
Microsoft Office is not just overpriced–for most users, it’s overkill. That’s why I’ve been increasingly recommending IBM Lotus Symphony, a well-rounded office suite that just so happens to be free. It’s built on open-source favorite OpenOffice, but sports a sleeker, friendlier interface.
In fact, most home users need nothing more than a light-weight application and the various Web-based applications look like very viable options for home use. CNET has an article, Making the switch from Microsoft Office to Web apps, that describes using the service ThinkFree. Better known is the one provided by Google Docs. A description of switching from Office to Google Docs is at App Scout:
If you’ve been thinking about abandoning Microsoft Office on the desktop in favor of a Web-based solution, Google Docs is a natural solution. The nice thing about Google Docs is that you can upload Microsoft Word docs and Excel spreadsheets without a problem. If you have a lot of documents you’d like to import however, the Google Docs Uploader can save a lot of time.
Yet another Web-based alternative is Zoho. Some description is at TechCrunch:
Web-based word processors keep closing the gap with Microsoft Office. Since its launch, Zoho now has 650,000 users, a 30 percent increase from just last November, the company tells us. It is doing 2 million user sessions per month. And its users have created more than one million documents on Zoho Writer (1.6 million, if you include its online presentation and spreadsheet products, Zoho Show and Zoho Sheets).
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