Close your wallet – salvation is at hand.
I’m tired of Microsoft changing their software every three or so years and in the process also changing their document format. I’ve had it! I’m going Office free now and in the future and there are lots of options.
OpenOffice.Org is a free and great piece of software to use for documents. They just release version 3.1 and it seems to work great. You can donate if to help them with their development.
Google documents allows you to make documents, spreadsheets and . The only caveat is that it is what they call cloud computing which means that the program is on the internet and not on your computer. If you don’t have internet access – you’re screwed.
Microsoft also just said that Office 2010 will be free and in the clouds, much like Google documents. They will start beta testing it in a month or so.
I’ve also pretty much given up using Microsoft Outlook and instead use Yahoo mail which does a great job. I do pay an extra $20/year for some better features in Yahoo, but it’s worth the money.
PowerPoint is the only holdout on my computer. I’m going to try Impress which is the OpenOffice version and see how it works.
