Word processing - why break the bank?
It is easy to get caught up in the hype that surrounds the latest greatest offering of an office suite from Microsoft, and when you buy a new computer for your business, it is all too easy to accept the office suite which comes with it at an apparently small cost. However, that small cost plus the upgrades you will be encouraged to pay for, multiplied by the number of computers in your business can add up to a significant amount.
Alternatives
So, what are the alternatives? Well, there are some brilliant alternatives out there, from downloading a full office suite from Libre Office or OpenOffice.org or using an online system such as Google Docs. Any of these can really reduce the cost of providing word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software along with an application for creating drawings for you and your staff and any one of them will almost certainly offer all of the features and faciliities you could possibly need.
So how do you choose what to use? Downloading either of the two suites which are both from the same stable is a very small expense these days. Each weigh in at around 190 MB and so should arrive in around 5 minutes on a good broadband connection. And of course, they are also completely free. What's more not only are they free as in beer, but they are also free as in speech. This means that the code in them is open source (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software for a good definition) which gives you as the end user the rights to have and hold a copy of that code for ever, and usually to modify it should you need to in order to suit your own needs.
Why worry?
You may ask why this matters, well it means that you will always be able to use the software, and no corporation can decide that your license has expired, or that you must pay for an upgrade in order to continue to enjoy the software, or that you would be breaking their terms and conditions should you decide to move the same software onto another computer. The software may not have quite the degree of "eye candy" which the latest suite from Microsoft has, but then, does your business need that? I would say potentially not, but your business does need reliability and low cost, and the free office suites give you that. There is an excellent piece of writing about the different philosophies behind free open source, software and that developed by large companies, it is called The Cathedral and the Bazaar and I wholeheartedly recommend reading it, even if you are not a software writer.
Google Docs
I mentioned Google Docs earlier. This way of running your office suite has a lot of advantages, and some very big disadvantages right now. The advantages are in sharing - collaboration with other people either in your office or somewhere else entirely is so easy, you can add Google Docs to a phone call a Skype call, Google Chat or another way to talk and you have a massively powerful way to get work done. The suite includes all the major components you probably need, and making sure your documents are safe is the responsibility of Google, and you really can trust them to make sure it is safe. For very small businesses, Google Apps (the service that includes Google Docs) is free for up to 10 users. More than that and the cost is $50 per user per year (around £31) which is still only 1/10 the cost of a full Microsoft Office suite. The down side is that the suite only works well when you have a fast Internet connection. If you are on the move this could be a problem, or if you live (as I do) in an area poorly served by broadband then sometimes it could mean you simply cannot access your own documents. Only you can judge how good your broadband connection is, and how vital is your access to your documents.
Conclusion
So in conclusion, you have little to lose by trying one of these office suites and potentially everything to gain. To discuss how we may be able to help with a migration to a free office suite, why not contact us now?
Next time I will be looking at alternatives to expensive graphics software - what do you really need to edit your images?
