I really hate Micro$oft.
I was hoping to avoid using Micro$oft products as much as possible with my new computer, but today I had to crumble and purchase Office XP in order to secure some work coming up in December. It’s not that I have anything against Micro$oft per say, it’s just that I have this allergic reaction to the covert collection and dissemination of my personal and private information without my permission by large, faceless, big-brother type corporations via invasive ‘product registration’.
Makes me break out in hives, it does.
Anywaste, after doing a quick search online, I found that the cheapest price for Office XP Standard was around $390. I paid $350, thanks to a discount, and should receive my copy of this thinly disguised attack on my private information and personal identity tomorrow. To me, the price isn’t too unreasonable especially since I make a living using this stuff, but ever since the economy started spiraling down the toilet I’ve noticed that a lot of people are trying to save money however they can.
So I’m going to offer the world some free advice.
When you next order a computer do not have it pre-loaded with Micro$oft Office. Instead, try OpenOffice.org’s office suite, which is free, and see if you can live with it instead. As someone who is a power user of Micro$oft Office, I can honestly say that I didn’t miss a thing when I used OOO’s version of Word, Outlook and Excel and I doubt anyone would really notice the difference after only a single week of use. If it weren’t for the fact that my clients depend on PowerPoint slideshows for their meetings, I probably wouldn’t have ever even thought about buying Office again, so I heartily recommend the OOO product.
But wait, there’s more.
You see, hypothetically speaking, if someone were to discover that they absolutely, positively, needed to have Office in order to live, then I would still say to them, do not get Office pre-installed. Instead, still hypothetically speaking of course, go to your local software shop and purchase the Student version of Office. Now, I would never do such a thing myself because that would be ‘wrong’ and ‘deceitful’, but I have heard whispers of other, less virtuous, Geeks who have done this very thing. These scandalous characters have let it be known throughout all of Geekdom that the Student version of Office is the same full featured set of applications one gets when purchasing Office Standard, but at a massively discounted price of only $130.
Makes one wonder why Standard costs so much, no?
I’m perfectly happy not using XP. In fact, I am curious as to why XP is that great to begin with.
But not so curious as to go and buy it.
I’m sorry your beautiful new computer must be exposed to M$.
I am trying out Think Free Office on my MAC. Oddly enough, it isn’t free, but the price is nominal, $50.00 or something like that. It works good so far. I am also a “power user” of office, but I rarely need to break out my MS prowess. I haven’t found anything that I cant do in TFO yet. However, I will be checking out OOO. You can’t ever beat free!! Hope they have a MAC version.
i’m a recent convert to star office 6.0… sun’s completely office xp interoperable software. i actually like it alot better than office xp, simply because it doesn’t think it’s smarter than me (ever try to debunk auto-format rules in word?).
you can open office xp docs (word, excell, powerpoint) and save into star office format, then file exchange with others (running open office on mac or star office on linux). and it’s only like $70. imho… the menus and toolbars are much more accessible.