Open Source

As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently paid about $200 for the latest version of Microsoft Office. I am a Vista user--one who hasn't experienced it as terribly as everyone else apparently has--and decided I wanted to upgrade my business mail and contacts to Office 2007. After installation I noticed that besides a new interface and a few improved features, there wasn't a whole lot there that I didn't have already with Office 2003. This of course, got me thinking. Should I have spent that money on baby formula instead?

While reading various tech web-sites, I ran across something called OpenOffice.org, which is a complete suite of office applications that is entirely free. Out of curiosity, I downloaded and installed them without a hitch. I fired up Writer, a word processing program strikingly similar to MS Word, and found it to be completely capable and fully featured. The same went for all the programs--all easy to use and similar to their paid counterparts. Writer reads and saves as Word's .doc file format, so not even compatibility is an issue.

All this got me thinking again: why did I pay money for something that does the same thing? Granted, MS Office is significantly better looking, but looks aren't everything...