If you have been using a computer for very long, you arewell aware of Microsoft Office's big stranglehold on business productivity software.
After all, what kind of communication, mailing orother business document ISN'T created by typing in MicrosoftWord, adding and subtracting in Microsoft Excel orpublishing a presentation in Powerpoint?
Microsoft Office has become the de facto standard in officeproductivity software (except for some places in the legalprofession, where Corel's Word Perfect is still consideredstandard) all across the world. Most businesses would cometo a screeching halt if their copy of MS Office were todisappear from their machine.
While a business owner can be extremely productive withMS Office, that productivity does come at a price. Rightnow, that price is hovering around $370.00 for ONE copy ofOffice. Not bad if you are a solo entrepreneur, but whatif you have 10-50 employees? $370.00 here and there andpretty soon you're talking some real money...
There is a new player on the scene now and it's calledOpenOffice.org. It is a spinoff from software originallywritten by Sun Microsystems and is designed to be areplacement for MS Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).
What's the difference between MS Office and Open Office?
Well, one costs $370.00 and one costs $0.00.
Can you guess which is which?
One of the two releases upgrades every few years andcharges you full price for them. The other also releasesupgrades every few years and gives them away.
Which one sounds better to you?
If you are a business owner responsible for outfitting5-10 or 20 computers with productivity software forwordprocessing and spreadsheet work, you can't afford NOT totake a look at OpenOffice.org for your business.
Apart from the price benefit, here are some other hugebenefits to using Open Office:PDFs are a cinch. Right now, MS Office can't turn yourdocuments into PDFs without the help of third partysoftware. Perhaps the next upgrade (and YOUR next$370.00) will provide this functionality, but right nowyou're out of luck. In Open Office, creating a PDF is assimple as clicking one button.
Your data will NEVER be locked or rendered obsolete,waiting for you to purchase the next upgrade to softwareyou've already paid for once.
Open Office is available for EVERY type of computer andoperating system under the sun. It comes in flavors forWindows, Linux, Mac and a whole lot more...
Open Office is OPEN. That means it is customizable by youfor you. If you run a business and need a certain functionto be added, it is as simple as hiring a programmer andtelling them what you want changed. The whole thing is underyour control.
Open Office isn't going anywhere. Backed by a communityof thousands upon thousands of users and developers, OpenOffice is quickly becoming THE standard outside of the US,where Microsoft's marketing department seems to dominatethe airwaves.
So what if you own a Mac? How do you get your hands on acopy of Open Office? Open Office is available for you in aslightly different flavor called NeoOffice. You can downloadit here:
http://www.neooffice.org
And now, the answer to the big question you are probablyasking...
Can I open Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with OpenOffice?
YES YOU CAN! With all but a very few exceptions, allversions of MS Word and Excel and Powerpoint documents willopen without incident in Open Office. If you are in ahighly specialized industry and use a lot of Word macros andadvanced layout features, just do a quick test. Most likely,things will be fine...
So where do you get Openoffice.org?
The name says it all...
http://www.openoffice.org
Get your copy today!
