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Z E N e w s - Issue 3: Office Alternatives |
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Microsoft Office 2007Microsoft has recently released Office 2007. You can try out Office 2007 via a free online “test drive” here. There is also a comparison of all of the Office 2007 Suites on Microsoft's site. The most common Office 2007 editions for business are: Small Business Edition (RRP:$749): Word, Excel, Outlook with BCM, Powerpoint and Publisher Professional Edition (RRP:$849): As per SBE but with the addition of Access. Note: It is often considerably cheaper to purchase Office 2007 with a new computer as you then have access to special pricing. Further note that special licensing applies to OEM Office products. Office accounts for 30% of Microsoft’s income, contributing US$11 billion to its revenues in 2005. It boasts more than 400 million users worldwide. The applications (Word, Excel etc.) in the current version of Office, Office 2007, are feature-rich and for the “power-user” familiar with all (or at least many) of the options available Office is a productivity tool worth paying for. Moreover for sites using Microsoft Exchange, we believe that Outlook is the best e-mail client. However there are many users that don’t use the advanced features of Office, and for those users Office may not represent good value as they’re paying for features that they never (or rarely) use. |
Alternatives?For Office users that only use the ‘standard’ features, there are free (and some commercial – but cheaper) alternatives to Microsoft Office which are worth considering. Note: Microsoft Exchange includes a client license for the applicable version of Outlook (Outlook is the Exchange e-mail client) so you are licensed to use Outlook in an Exchange environment even if you don’t use Microsoft Office. OpenOffice is a fully- featured open source office suite which is compatible with Microsoft Office. Now up to version 2.04, OpenOffice (OO) includes: Writer (Word), Impress (Presentation), Calc (Spreadsheet), Base (Database), Math (Function creator), Draw (Vector Drawing tool). Compared to Microsoft Office, the interface for these applications is plainer, but this doesn’t affect their ease-of-use, it’s just that if you’re familiar with Office, you’ll notice the difference initially. In our experience, some of the more complex spreadsheet functions work differently in Calc versus Excel, which means while you can open a complex Excel spreadsheet in Calc, you may need to make some manual changes to some formulas and then save that spreadsheet in Calc as a separate file. Documents, spreadsheets and databases that do not use advanced Office features can generally be read from and written to automatically in OO without any difficulty. Another advantage with OO is that it allows you to save your work as a PDF file, which can only be achieved with Microsoft Office by purchasing an add-on. |
Online - a new optionGoogle Docs and Spreadsheets is another free tool which allows users to create and edit documents and spreadsheets entirely online through a web browser. While Google Docs no doubt does not include all of the features to be found in Office 2007, one significant advantage that Google Docs has, aside from being free, is that it allows for easy collaboration between multiple users in real time. We have worked on documents using Google Docs where co-workers located across Australia (and the world) were able to easily work on the same document at the same time - far easier and more efficient than sending the document back and forth via email. Another online offering is Zoho Office, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint equivalents for free but in addition provides other tools like Project and CRM online which you can use for a fee. Sun StarOffice 8 is the commercial version of OpenOffice developed by Sun Microsystems. You can find a detailed comparison sheet between OpenOffice and StarOffice here. With StarOffice you’re entitled to commercial-level technical support from Sun rather than having to use the open-source OpenOffice forums. StarOffice 8 is currently available for $US 60.00 There are a number of free or cheap alternatives to Microsoft Office; we have covered some of the more popular alternatives in this overview. If you would like advice on how to implement Office technology to meet your business needs whilst managing your licensing costs, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are also able to give assistance with ensuring that your existing licensing is legal |
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