I keep running into a problem with lots of students and parents at school. They show up with a paper on a disk to print, only to discover that they have done said paper in the craptacular Microsoft Works that seems to come on tons of new computers, or WordPerfect, NONE of which we have at school. We can't afford to buy every type of software that comes down the pike, and alot of people can't afford the ridiculous amount Microsoft charges for MS Office. I decided to be proactive and offer people a solution: Open Office
I've tried to educate alot of the parents on the existence of Open Office. It's free, it's easy to download and install, and it WORKS. Documents can be saved in the various Office formats if that's what you need. I can do almost anything in Open Office that I can in the standard MS Office. I have it installed on all of the computers along side MS Office. My only real complaint is that there is no easy Publisher type application, or a Frontpage-type program. (actually, I've found a replacement for this outside of Open Office, but that's another blog, and you CAN make websites in Oo, just not as easily) Given the price of software these days, I've really started to consider switching to Open Office altogether, at home, at school, in my classes, everything. My whole point in teaching people about technology is to teach them how to use ANY technology down the pike, not just what one company puts out, or what is hot right now. Teach them what an operating system or office application IS and the fundamentals behind it, and you can easily learn ANY OS or office application that is placed in front of you. Why use software that is $200 + per computer when you can use software that is FREE for the same purpose?? For people who either can't afford Office, or just want to break free from the neverending upgrade/license cycle of Microsoft products, Open Office is worth a try.
I'll save the Linux blog for another day. *G*
ETA: Here's an interesting blog entry I found about Open Office vs. MS Office as well.
Technorati tags: Open Office, Open Source, software, Microsoft Office, education, computers
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