You've got to spend money to make money, they say. But do you have to spend $399 for a copy of Office 2003 Standard Edition for a single PC?
That's Microsoft's price for your basic four-banger suite: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and e-mail client with basic contact manager. The Small Business and Professional editions add desktop publishing for $50 more and desktop publishing plus database for $100 more, respectively. Even considering discounts for volume licensing, the cost of outfitting just a handful of PCs with Office can easily run into thousands of dollars.
That's a lot of money to spend on an office suite, even if you do spend most of your workday cozied up with those four applications. Fortunately, there are alternatives: office suites that let you get your work done on a budget.
Why Pay More?
Probably the most mainstream alternative to Microsoft Office is Corel WordPerfect Office 11. The $300 Standard Edition includes the WordPerfect word processor, Quattro Pro spreadsheet, and Presentations slideshow program; there's no e-mail client, but Corel throws in an address book that integrates with Microsoft Outlook -- as well as 1,000 fonts, 9,500 clip-art images, and sundry extras. A fully functional trial version is available for download, and software pundits anticipate an upgraded release of Corel's suite this spring.
If $300 per seat -- $150 if you still use Microsoft's recently-saved-from-support-termination, incompatible-with-Office-2003 Windows 98 -- still seems like a stretch for your budget, check out 602PC Suite. For just $60 for three computers (or $400 for 25), this bundle delivers a word processor, spreadsheet, image editor, and photo organizer. Presentation software is notably absent, as are some of the power-user features that other suites provide such as macros, but 602PC Suite has plenty of power for average users with modest needs. A free trial version is also available online.
The Sunny Side of the Street
So far, the biggest blow to Microsoft's productivity-software dominance has been a one-two punch from Sun Microsystems and the open-source community. Sun's StarOffice 7, priced at $80 for a single PC or $60 apiece for 25 seats, includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database tools. It's very complete; except for incompatibility with Office documents containing complex macros, most users will find no appreciable tradeoffs when switching from the Brand M biggie. Nor is StarOffice limited to Windows -- versions are available for Linux and for Sun's Solaris as well, with the suite's XML-file-format documents compatible across operating-system platforms.
WinPlanet readers are already familiar with the free-for-the-download suite based on the StarOffice 7 code, OpenOffice.org 1.1. This Sun-sponsored open-source project has the same full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation and drawing applications, but doesn't come with a database -- or with StarOffice's printed documentation and third-party fonts and clip art. But it has an even longer cross-platform reach, with Mac OS X and FreeBSD versions joining the Windows, Linux, and Solaris ports.
OpenOffice.org recently overcame perhaps its biggest hurdle to small-business buyers -- tech support limited to online forums and FAQs -- with the addition of per-incident support provided by Sun on a first-incident-free basis.
Go With the Flow -- Or No?
Whichever alternative office suite you pick, remember that your company doesn't work in a vacuum. Chances are, you have colleagues and clients that use Microsoft Office, so you'll need to be able to read their files. Perfect compatibility is impossible as long as Microsoft refuses to release details of its proprietary file formats such as .DOC and .XLS, but all of the programs here do a decent job of opening, saving, and displaying all but the most elaborately formatted Word, Excel, or (602PC Suite aside) PowerPoint files. Again, however, fancy formats and in-house task-automation or data-retrieval macros will turn the pretenders pale.
Nor are any of these suites complete Office work-alikes, though all offer relatively familiar and friendly menus and toolbars; give yourself time to learn the commands and intricacies of the one that you choose. Here's where good documentation can make all the difference; StarOffice and WordPerfect Office, for instance, come with thick printed manuals, while OpenOffice.org is backed by a user-maintained hodgepodge of online documentation.
With a little patience and practice, however, you may find one of these alternative suites fits your needs to a T -- keeping you just as productive, and considerably more solvent, than Microsoft Office.
