other than Microsoft bashing. Such posts are not generally allowed. They are off-topic and serve no purpose.
Having said that I will also say this. I use Microsoft Office and have had no problems.
I often suggest to others OpenOffice if they want an alternative to Microsoft Office, but I see no reason to change myself.
Mark
WordPerfect and Lotus 123 are superior programs in every sense of the word. They have always been better than anything that MS offers. MS has been better at marketing and monopolizing the market for office suites just like they did with Windows.
To my knowledge, Microsoft has never produced an original piece of software at all. They look at what others are doing and when they see the market then they jump in and start their own. They copy the functionality from others come out with a first release that sucks and then build on it. This has been their modus operandi since they bought DOS from Seattle Computing.
Businesses and some home users have been converted to hamsters in wheels under the compatibility flag. Its worked.
Can business and home users survive without Office? Absolutely. I have saved clients tens of thousands by converting their users to OpenOffice. Of course there's resistance but after a while they get used to it. For e-mail I give them Thunderbird. Recently one user insisted in getting Office. Management gave in and bought it for her. I installed and configured it. When I showed her she was shocked. She kept asking; how come I can't do this or that anymore? She hated going back to Office and begged me to put her other programs back. I did, and again she's happy.
Think about this. What if WordPerfect or IBM teemed up with Mozilla and bundled Firefox and Thunderbird with their programs? Office killer? Could be!
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