If you go to Best Buy you can buy MS Office "Home and Student"
version for about $130. If you go to Ebay you can find a 3 user license
of the same for $79 and even less...
Sure it is worth
shopping around. I think the other subject is how MS hangs its hook.
Getting folks in their new system, all surrounded by their new "Web
Space" of Live.com and they get us hooked. Their whole angle with these
things is to have a massive user base that no one can ignore. If all
this forces the lawyers and doctors of the world to ante up $500 a piece
for their version of Office Ultimate they have won their game.
I
am trying not to. I do like MS OneNote 2007. I bought that and it
works very well. This comes, by the way, in the lowly "Home and
Student" version which is critically missing Access Database but has the
other "more essentials" of Word, Excel and Powerpoint (yes also
OneNote).
Remember the Slogan "Just Say No"... I try
to say that about MS. They have a few great sofware pieces. FoxPro,
which they are discontinuing, they purchased from Fox Software many many
years ago. It is a wonderful piece and worth getting a hold of before
it is gone. Their angle here is to hook everyone on SQL Server. They
are doing a good job of it... but I am trying not to go there. I have
the advantage of not really knowing SQL syntax and having a great base
w/ FoxPro... but like I said "Just Say No" to MS.
The
alternatives, it seems to me, right now are OpenOffice and Google Docs.
Both are basically free. It is hard to miss the advertising in Gmail
(but worth trying to find a way). The rest of the system should at
least be explored. And OpenOffice, all I can say, lets all get it done
and jump through the hoops. MS is making their software awful "cozy" w/
their transparencies and "silverlight" system. It is on the surface.
Just emulate it. Don't get hooked. It will cost forever.
I will let you know when I am MS free. I don't know when that might be, if ever.
