Alternatives to Microsoft office - Essay Example

Alternative Options to the Microsoft Office Suite Due to the software package being bundled with many new personal computers running a Windows operating system, the Microsoft Office program suite is one of the best known office software sets available. However, simple control of market square is not a definite indicator of quality. Depending on an individual user's needs, other publishing, writing, and storage software on the market may be equally useful, if not more. Alternatives exist in the form of both commercially licensed and open source software programs, many of which are completely compatible with the current Microsoft Office file types.

The most notable of alternative office software packages is the OpenOffice.org suite. OpenOffice.org is free to download, and is completely open source. It can be used freely for any reason, including commercial. The software will never expire, and the wording of the licensing agreement ensures that any user who downloads a free copy can never be charged for it even if there are later policy changes. The program is capable of opening and reading documents in most formats, including the standard .doc*, .ppt*, and .

xls* file types, as well as saving files into pre-2007 formats and PDF documents. There is no capacity to save into the .*x format, but as the current Microsoft Office suite is backwards compatible to that format, even when sending files to other users this is a non-issue (OpenOffice.org). The Microsoft Word alternative, OpenOffice.org Writer, and the Powerpoint alternative, OpenOffice.org Impress, are nearly identical in features offered and ease of use. The layout is similar to pre-2007 Office and so feels comfortable and familiar to most users of the Office software bundle (OpenOffice.org). However, OpenOffice.

org Calc and Base, the products comparative to Microsoft Excel and Access, leave much to be desired in calculating power and data analysis. An average user is generally unaffected by this lack, but a business user would most likely need to purchase Excel as a standalone product to supplement OpenOffice.org Calc. A commercial alternative is the Lotus SmartSuite from IBM, which contains the spreadsheet program Lotus 1-2-3, the word processor WordPro, and the presentation program Freelance Graphics.

Lotus SmartSuite integrates with the email management program Lotus Notes, also from IBM. Similarly to OpenOffice.org, SmartSuite can open, display, and save to Microsoft Office file formats, though its capabilities are limited to pre-2007 file types. A single-user install of the Lotus SmartSuite costs approximately $332 (IBM, “Lotus SmartSuite”). In addition to OpenOffice.org and Lotus SmartSuite, there are literally dozens of other alternative office software suites. Many of these are free, and both web- and download-based options exist.

The effort needed to move away from Microsoft Office has never been so slight. The availability of free and open source software is especially tempting for business network administrators, as these bundles require no initial investment of capital and can be installed slowly to reduce the manpower investment. While Microsoft does currently hold the lion's share of the market in office productivity suites, this may not continue to be true into the future with so many new competitors emerging into the market and the increased quality of existing competition.

References IBM. (n.d.). Lotus SmartSuite. In IBM Office Productivity Suite. Retrieved March 11, 2011 from http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/smartsuite/ OpenOffice.org. (n.d.). OpenOffice.org. Retrieved March 11, 2011 from http://why.openoffice.org/