Save $500, Use Open Office
Eric Burke blogged his positive experience using Open Office as a replacement for Microsoft Office.
Eric is not an open source zealot like I sometimes am. He has no patience for inferior software. Yet Open Office works fine for what he's doing.
The other day I was having a cross-cubicle conversation about how cheap computers are:
I can buy a white box computer at a local store for $600. 2.4GHz CPU, 80GB hard drive, and 1GB memory.
How come every time I buy a computer it costs me $1700 at Dell.
You don't have to buy from Dell. And you probably are paying for software.
Yeah. I always buy Windows and Office.
I stopped buying Windows a long time ago. Linux works just fine for me for what I do. And I use Open Office.
The reason I buy Microsoft Office is that I sometimes have to collaborate with other people who send me Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.
Open Office will handle most of those fine. You can even save in Microsoft format. I've been using Open Office for a couple of years now, just to open other people's Word documents. I have never come across one that Open Office can't handle. Excel spreadsheets too.
How much is Open Office.
It's free.
Free?
Just go to http://www.openoffice.org and download it.
I'll take a look at it. You may have just saved me $500.
In case you are thinking Open Office is some sort of inferior knock off written by hyper-active college kids, read the Tim Bray post I linked to yesterday again:
... (Sun is paying several floors in a big building full of people to work on it, and there are tons of other contributors) ...