OpenOffice
Thursday, 21 February 2008 18:02
Recently, while doing some website updates for one of my clients, I was asked how to save an iWork file (Mac) as a Microsoft Office document. After a few questions I realized my client had just purchased a new Mac and was evaluating both iWork and Microsoft Office before deciding which one to purchase.
My advice: 'download OpenOffice, it's free'.
Free is good. It is. And OpenOffice isn't just free in the sense that you don't have to pay for it, but it's also free in the sense that, unlike it's proprietary step-siblings, it saves your data, by default, in an open format. What this means is that you are not forced to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Office or iWork when Microsoft or Mac decides to no longer support older versions of software.
All of this is daily speak for those in the open source community, but for those who have not heard of open source software, it can be quite alarming to realize that all your data is stored in a file that you don't really have control over. What I mean is this, when a company owns a file format (like Microsoft owns the .doc file format), that company can make it extremely difficult to transfer your file to another type of file. They can also make it exert pressure on you to try to force you to upgrade to the newest version.
I recently had this problem when I purchased a new computer running Vista (a whole other issue) and wanted to install an older version of Quicken Home & Business. Though the software installed without a hitch I could not open my file because I had installed a patch issued by Quicken on my old computer. Quicken no longer supports the version of Quicken I was running so the patch is no longer available. My choices where to upgrade, to try to find another type of software that could open this file or to start over. In this case I had a version of QuickBooks that could read the file. That allowed me to open my file, but did not solve the problem of vendor lock-in.
Anyway, the point is for anyone looking for new office software, take a look at OpenOffice. It's free and so are the files you create with it.
