Open Source

Open Office sounds like a fantastic idea. Why spend so much of our cash to support Microsoft is Open Source does the same thing and is less of an aggravation. If I had never worked with any Open Source products I'd be on board with this and how. Their Open Source Definition is fantastic.

However, my experience with Open Source was moderately ugly. A library I know purchased a thin client computer system that used Open Source software. It was a disaster with everything from grade school kids in tears because their report/project wouldn't print out as it was supposed to up to and including very angry older patrons who reported spending huge amounts of time on a resume, document, etc. only to have it reformat itself into something utterly useless.

From what I can tell, Open Source sure looks like Word, Excel, etc., however, it is not. As long as what you're doing is fairly uncomplicated, it works well enough and it certainly is a whole lot cheaper than Microsoft products.

I can't recommend it.