I spend a lot of hours in front of a personal computer. Most of the people I know spend a lot of hours in front of personal computers. I speak computer. Not everyone does. I have lived with or done battle with a long series of evolving hardware and software. Not everyone has. I have lost touch with the rest of the population. Not everyone eats and sleeps this stuff.
I realized this when a friend invited me over and maneuvered me to their new computer and then asked me to "teach" him how to set it up. He had a list of things a "guy at the office" said this computer could do and we had about 20 minutes before dinner would be ready. So why not?
It was the "teach me" part that scared me. There's something about the naive way that the great unwashed expect you to just peek over their shoulders and whisper effortless wisdom in their ears. Just in time, I remembered just how good a plumber this friend was and how little land my family could afford to disappoint him. So, in I jumped. After all, we had a full 20 minutes.
The task before us was a first-time boot of a mass-market PC. God help us. This doesn't evoke the sense of adventure it would have a few years ago, but it still had enough to make me take at least one really deep breath when that hard disk spun for the first time in a new home.
Any time you cold-boot a computer in that dark place and time before any logos show up, you always feel a little spooky, but the first time is special. We waited while little tremors and unfamiliar whirring routines played out. Up popped Windows XP Home Edition with a huge case of "ad acne." Dinner was ready about the time we stripped the majority of the flotsam from that lonely vista Microsoft chose for its default Desktop. We dumped the recycle bin and went to fortify ourselves. The real problems were left till after dinner. Then, grabbing a bucket of coffee, we settled in and applied ourselves to the housebreaking of applications.
The problem was, there weren't many applications in the bundle. There was an operating system and all the helper applications Windows encompasses. There was a choice of Browsers (sounds of arms being twisted in the great Northwest) and a few shareware, brain-damaged, trial versions of famous utilities and multimedia powerhouses.
It's a little sad watching somebody new to the PC experience realize that the $800 or so they just spent on the all-in-one, "complete" package doesn't do the things they thought it would do without taking another big bite out of their budget for the office productivity basics, i.e., word processing, some form of number cruncher, and a searchable records organizer.
Most mass-market desktop computers usually ship with an office bundle of some sort, but this one put the flash in the hardware and, aside from a desktop full of software come-ons, XP toolboxes, and satellite mini apps, left a big hole where the basics should have been. I could read the panic in his eyes. How much more was all this going to pry Out of his pocket? We had some decisions to make.
Most of us would admit under pressure that we don't really push our personal Office suites all that hard. Our networks and work groups may be maxed out running Uber-Apps, but where the bunny slippers meet the desktop, things are not quite as demanding. Real folks don't push the works of real programmers.
Microsoft Works [http://www.microsoft.com/products/works/] costs under 50 bucks and comes with a potful of apps to get things organized. All the players are there. In a slightly beefed up version -- marketed for somewhere around $100 as Works Suite 2003 -- even the full, big-kid version of Word is included. There is nothing about either of these products that would make you feel ripped off. Both are solid and give you great value.
The things that irritate me about XP also irritate me about Works. Still, they may be the same things that make them ideal choices for new users. Both products impose a stifling amount of hand holding and pressure to adhere to the productivity path the authors have chosen for you. This is probably a good thing if you don't give a hoot about the process and don't need to shave seconds off your personal best.
I suggested this alternative to my buddy, but by now the clock was ticking near midnight. We were online, getting mail, and choosing a screen saver. He looked at me and asked if! had a copy of Microsoft Office. It's what everyone used down at the office. He asked if I would loan him a copy?
How can I put this? No, I wouldn't.
It's not that I think it would impact Microsoft if I betrayed my license agreement, nor am I obsessively honest. I also don't think the company has a version of Javert, who will hunt me down like Jean Valjean in Les Miz, if I steal a loaf of Microsoft's bread. It's just that it always feels sleazy passing around somebody else's work without their permission. If Microsoft Office was the only Office suite available and only the rich and connected had access, then we might plan a raid to liberate it. But it isn't. It is just expensive and that is not an excuse to rip it off.
I have my own thoughts about how Microsoft does business and what it represents in the way of a business model. But it's not about them. It's about me. There is an honorable alternative and, if I don't take it, I'm not a freedom fighter battling with a heartless corporate environment, I'm a thief. If I am truly concerned with sending Microsoft a message, I shouldn't harden their hold on the market by distributing their software illegally, I should walk away and take my friends with me. Openly.
Out of Here
Impossible? No. You can walk away from Windows if you are willing to do some adjusting and adopt one of the rapidly developing Linux distributions such as Mandrake 9.0 [http://www.mandrakesoft.com/] or one of the Red Hat [http://www.redhat.com/] offerings. The alternatives are not free. They are value-added distributions, but the driving force still comes from the free give and take of the underlying Linux community Linux is free. You pay for the packaging, installation utilities, and the level of personal support you want.
But first things first. We were talking about what to do if you consider a list price for Office professional of $579 (street price $200-$300) a little too steep.
Microsoft Office is overkill in all but the most extreme cases. Most of us use about 2 percent of the power in those apps. The real advantage is the fact that the file types and structures are the gold standard. What you buy is entree into the "no sweat" transfer of what you create with others and a high degree of confidence that they will have no problems putting it to use. There is now an alternative for the majority of us that is essentially free and, at the same time, can introduce us to a very active software movement.
The hottest trend in the software development world is called Open Source. It is the philosophy that software authoring is infinitely more interesting when the creative input comes from a dedicated group of coders focused on enhancing a fully documented, remarked, and accessible base program. The payoff comes from bragging rights and respect from your peers. In many cases, the results of some of these genteel or -- judging from forum traffic -- in some cases, not so genteel, "propeller head" throw-downs are some really fine software.
If you don't know much about the Robin Hood end of the software universe, get acquainted by going to The Open Source Web site at http://www.opensource.org. In fact, you may want to Google your way through a few hits on "open source" or "Freeware" just to get an idea how diverse these people are in their goals and philosophies. The only thing they really agree on is that the fruits of their effort should be available to you and that a simple thank you would be payment enough. Bless 'em all.
OpenOffice 1.0
One of the most impressive projects started life in Germany in the mid-1980s at StarDivision, the original author of the StarOffice suite of software. Acquired by Sun Microsystems, it was released by Sun as StarOffice 5.2 in June of 2000. Sun moved on to a commercial version with the release of StarOffice 6.0 [http://wwws.sun.com/ software/star/staroffice/6.0/]. Sun also did a good thing by releasing the vast majority of the source code for StarOffice 5.2 to the open source community The result is OpenOffice 1.0
OpenOffice is a full-tilt office suite and the only one I know of that comes with a mission statement:
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.
They are serious about this and it is the first thing you see when you hit the Web site [http://www.openoffice.org]. In fact, the sense of mission is laced throughout the entire site. One of the first things the home page makes available is the opportunity to pitch in.
There are over 20 different public projects driving OpenOffice. There are also forums that cover a wide spectrum of issues. You get the impression more goes on here than meets the eye. This one incarnation of the open source movement is a good place to get a feel for what drives the overall community. It is a very potent idea and worries the majors more than they like to admit.
Let's take a look at what you can download, install, and use freely without a sense of guilt. OpenOffice 1.0 is a collection of major productivity applications and some interesting additions that show its code monkey roots. It offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, equation editor, and drawing program. It opens most major formats, such as MS Office, almost flawlessly. It does it with more accuracy in a lot of cases than Microsoft Office does between generations of its own packages. Macros won't convert, but every time Microsoft issues a new version of Office and moves some of the menu items around, macro chaos usually results anyway. You can save files to a wide range of user-selectable, default standard formats. It has comprehensive help and spell checking in 15 languages.
An enormous list of the various applications features and capabilities appears online in the OpenOffice FAQs. If you have used a variety of word processors and were impressed with specific features native to a particular package, you will probably already find them in the Writer application or, if not, look harder or wait awhile. There is a good chance someone, or some dedicated coder cell, is sweating out the programming even as we speak.
One testimonial for the ease of transition from Word to Writer is the fact that I have been switching this article between Word and Writer for comparison purposes. For the last 30 minutes, I thought I was in Word. When I went to switch to Writer to run a menu comparison, I found I was already in Writer. So now I've switched to Word...I think. With the exception of the relocation of a few menu items, the applications are essentially cosmetically identical. Comparing functionality is more difficult.
The spreadsheet is a dead ringer for Excel for all practical purposes. It imported my test spreadsheets without a hiccup and at least matched Excel in recalc speed.
We don't speak about PowerPoint in polite company, but the Impress presentation application in OpenOffice does allow you to create PowerPointlike slide shows with about the same amount of effort you would expend in the Microsoft equivalent. Put some new batteries in your laser pointer and you can still put people to sleep with the same alacrity you always have.
The Draw module is your basic, vector-based, entry-level drawing program. If you do a lot of layout and design, it may be a tight fit. If you are a casual doodler and only need simple art for a document type, it may be all you need. The HTML editor is a subset of the Writer app and does the job well. It has a lot of automated functions and is fairly easy to get around in.
As for the Math module, I haven't a clue. I can make a lot of very complex-looking formulas with just a point and click. If I had any idea what it all meant, I could probably comment. Suffice it to say, it looks competent at what doing whatever Math modules do.
Yes or No
Microsoft Office is an iceberg or probably more accurately a six blind men and an elephant application suite. If you ask six power users for their judgments on the main focus of the suite and its most important capabilities, you will get six different answers. The first time I reviewed Microsoft Office many years ago, I picked it apart menu item by menu item. The explanations of each item were painfully thorough and mind numbingly in depth. By the rime I finished the review, no stone was left unturned and I could be confident that if the review prompted someone to plop down mega-bucks, they could not tell me I hadn't provided enough information for them to make an informed decision. Times and Microsoft Office have changed over the years. It would now take a committee to pick apart every possible capability of these enormous modules.
OpenOffice 1.0 is a viable alternative to the Microsoft lockdown. It may be all you ever need to make your way in the Office Apps world. Only you can make that decision.
This brings up the final advantage of reviewing open source applications. They are free. Do I recommend OpenOffice 1.0? Yes I do. Does it do everything you could possibly demand of it? Probably. Is it easy to master? Definitely. What if it doesn't work out? Uninstall it and I will personally refund double the purchase price.
So what did I do about my novice friend and the midnight invitation to commit a felony? I downloaded and installed OpenOffice and put an icon on the desktop. With any luck, he'll never know the difference.
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