microsoft office alternative

Replacements for Microsoft Office

Microsoft sells a wide range of products, from games and hardware to development tools and operating systems. But nearly one third of the company's multi-billion dollar quarterly profit can be credited to a single product line, Office. Office is a "productivity suite" bundling several separate programs with different functions into one package. As this is being written the standard release of Office includes a contact manager/e-mail program, spreadsheet, word processor, and slide show software - Outlook/Entourage, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, respectively. But other editions of Office (there are some half-dozen at last check) include more software like a desktop database, Web design tools, and development utilities. Microsoft currently prices those products so high that it is more economical to purchase Office and get all at once than buy two or more of them alone - so most people who need more than one of Microsoft's business applications end up buying all of them. This and Microsoft's habit of having Office preloaded into a majority of name-brand PCs sold makes Office the "standard" in businesses around the globe.

Sadly, the ubiquity of Office makes it a fat target for hackers and virus breeders, both of whom are helped by the suite's lack of coherent security features and integrated macro functions that just cry out for someone to take advantage of them. And even though Office is cheaper than buying all the applications inside it, those applications are severely overpriced - as is Office itself. The cheapest Office XP upgrade is over $200 and the entry-level retail box is more than twice that. That's not to mention the extra cost in hardware to actually support that monstrous collection of software. If you pick any Microsoft product to replace, it should be Office.