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Treat yourself to a suite alternative: OpenOffice.org 3.0
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OpenOffice.org 3.0 in effect, on my Ubuntu desktop
OpenOffice.org 3.0 is a great suite of office productivity applications (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation & database) that's very similar to Microsoft Office in function, and very different in price. Where pricing for Microsoft Office 2007 starts around $100, you can download and use OpenOffice.org 3.0 for free.
In fact, since OpenOffice.org 3.0 is open source software, it's also free to redistribute. In other words, if somebody asks you for a copy of your office suite, you can hand it over without without worrying that some coalition of willing FBI & Interpol agents might swing through your windows, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation style, to redress your copyright abuses.
Next to its free-ness, the best thing about OpenOffice.org is that it will run quite happily on your computer, whether you're a PC, a Mac, or a nerdy user of Linux or Solaris.
Mac users who have taken OpenOffice.org for a spin in the past will appreciate the way that version 3.0 blends naturally into OS X's Aqua interface -- previous versions of the suite for the Mac required the X11 subsystem from Apple to run, and these versions didn't seem very Mac-like in their operation.
PowerPC Mac-heads take note, however, this Aquafied version is for Intel Macs only--check out http://www.neooffice.org for a PPC-friendly option.
Now that we've established that OpenOffice.org will run on your computer--pretty much no matter what--you may be wondering whether this free suite will work with your Microsoft Office files.
OpenOffice.org will indeed open files created in Microsoft Office, and you can modify these files and save them back to Office format, as well as create new Office-formatted files. By default, OpenOffice.org does not save file in Microsoft formats, although you can change this, if you wish.
The reason for this file format proliferation is that until very recently, Microsoft kept the details of its document formats secret. Rather than depend on an incomplete understanding of a reverse-engineered document format, the creators of OpenOffice.org joined a group of other projects and companies to spec out a new, standardized format: the OpenDocument Format.
Today, OpenOffice.org uses ODF, as does IBM's Lotus Symphony, Google's Docs and Spreadsheets, Zoho Office, and others. Even Microsoft, which initially declined to join the ODF group, has announced its plans to add ODF support to Office 2007 early next year.
OpenOffice.org does a very good job with the file formats from Microsoft's pre-2007 Office releases (.doc, .xls, .ppt) and does a pretty good job with the new Office 2007 formats (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx).
My generic advice around office application file formats is that if you want to make sure that a document arrives at its destination looking exactly the way you intended, you should save it in Adobe's PDF format. Helpfully, OpenOffice.org includes a PDF export feature.
So OpenOffice.org works with the Microsoft files you might receive, and it provides a bulletproof means of controlling the way your documents look when you send them to other people. Perhaps the next logical question is whether OpenOffice.org does everything that Microsoft Office does.
It's safe to say that OpenOffice.org does not do everything that Microsoft Office does. I mean, does anyone, either within Microsoft or without, really even know everything that Office can do? How many clicks would it take to spelunk Office's depths These are koan-like questions, and each of the past three Microsoft Office releases has been designed primarily around the riddle of exposing more of these features to Office users; Microsoft calls this quest Discoverability.
I've been using OpenOffice.org for about six years now, and I can report the suite performs all of the Office features that I either know about, or was accustomed to using in Office. OpenOffice.org doesn't always handle things as elegantly as Office does, but it gets the job done.
For instance, a couple of releases ago, Microsoft added a nifty feature in Word in which pasting text from the Web into a document would spawn a little unobtrusive dialog offering to strip out the formatting of what you just pasted. I can't stand formatting junk buildup in my documents, so I thought this was a super feature.
In OpenOffice.org, there's no magically appearing mini dialog, but I can hit ctrl-shift-V to "Paste Special," (as opposed to the regular ctrl-V for regular paste) to have the option of pasting as plain text. A less-fancy implementation, but 100% functionally equivalent.
My needs are fairly modest: I write, edit, and pass around documents in the OpenOffice.org word processor, I crunch fantasy basketball stats in its spreadsheet application, and I use the presentation application to open up the PowerPoint slide decks I receive, convert them to PDFs, and follow along on conference calls in a simple PDF viewer.
I am, however, looking forward to expanding that fantasy stat analysis for the 2008 season using OpenOffice.org 3.0's shiny new Solver feature for working out multi-variable scenarios.
Your mileage will definitely vary, and how much it varies depends on just how you use these productivity applications. Although, given the fact that OpenOffice.org is one free 150MB-ish download away, it can't hurt to give it a run in your own productivity environment.
Weigh in with your reactions in the space below. I'd love to hear how you fare.
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