Break the mold: help: I'm being held hostage by Microsoft!(SoftwareReview)

• Author: Gray, Bruce A.

There has been one ubiquitous presence since the early days of desktop computing: Microsoft. The majority of the personal computing world uses at least one, if not many, Microsoft products in their daily work.

We all know Windows, Internet Explorer; Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, One Note, Access and, more recently, SharePoint and SkyDrive. Microsoft, through development and acquisition, has permeated our cyberworld to the point that product names are instantly recognizable for the type of documents they create.

Microsoft products have set the standard for years and have been effectively marketed, which has resulted in their marketplace dominance. But what are the alternatives? Are there less-expensive options? Flow do we break Microsoft's control grip of our computing lives? Here are some alternatives that provide much of the functionality of the products we've been licensing from Microsoft for years.

Alternative Suites (for Microsoft Office)

OpenOffice

(www.openoffice.org): A project of Apache Incubator/Apache Software Foundation, Open Office is free and mimics features of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Paint. Files are in the standard formats and are compatible with the Microsoft Office suite documents. The software is open-source, so anyone can create add-ins or features. Apache even has a process for people to get involved in development.

WordPerfect Office X5

(www.corel.com): Word Perfect was the early big player in word processing, but lost ground to Word when Microsoft invested significant development and marketing dollars in the program. Similarly, Quattro Pro was one of the big players in spreadsheets, along with Lotus-1-2-3, which once owned the market. Finally, there was the Paradox database, which enjoyed a brief heyday against dBase. Corel came along and purchased these also-rans from the early software wars and packaged with a Presentation tool and Mozilla Thunderbird to create a suite to compete with Microsoft Office. Their coup is offering this package at a lower price than MS Office. They also packaged Nuance Paper Port to incorporate built-in PDF management, and included WordPerfect Lightning, which is the One Note equivalent.

Corel Office

(www.corel.com): A low-budget and smaller featured office suite offered by Corel includes Corel Write, Corel Calculate and Corel Show (Word, Excel and PowerPoint compatible). This really isn't suitable for professional use, but would make an excellent alternative for home and...