And Then There's OpenOffice

Not 30 seconds after writing about Microsoft being the winner of the anti-trust battle, I read about the release of some free software that is supposed to be a replacement for Microsoft Exchange. This new product goes hand in hand with OpenOffice, a replacement for the Microsoft Office Suite.

I've tried OpenOffice and I must say I'm impressed. It seems to have all of the expected features and is compatible with Microsoft Office document formats. Although I can't necessarily say that it would be cheaper to switch an existing Microsoft Office environment over to OpenOffice, there's a pretty compelling argument for new businesses to give it a try. If for no other reason that it's free. If after giving it a whirl it doesn't work out, you could just jump on to the tried and true Microsoft bandwagon without incurring any additional costs that you wouldn't have incurred had you gone to Microsoft first.

I'll be sticking with Office 2000 myself. Why? Because I consider it to be one of the more stable versions of Office. It's also the version just before a lot of the useless, web-enabling type features were added.