Making the Business Case for Open Office

If you have been using a computer for very long, you are
well aware of Microsoft Office’s big stranglehold on
business productivity software.

After all, what kind of communication, mailing or
other business document ISN’T created by typing in Microsoft
Word, adding and subtracting in Microsoft Excel or
publishing a presentation in Powerpoint?

Microsoft Office has become the de facto standard in office
productivity software (except for some places in the legal
profession, where Corel’s Word Perfect is still considered
standard) all across the world. Most businesses would come
to a screeching halt if their copy of MS Office were to
disappear from their machine.

While a business owner can be extremely productive with
MS Office, that productivity does come at a price. Right
now, that price is hovering around $370.00 for ONE copy of
Office. Not bad if you are a solo entrepreneur, but what
if you have 10-50 employees? $370.00 here and there and
pretty soon you’re talking some real money…

There is a new player on the scene now and it’s called
OpenOffice.org. It is a spinoff from software originally
written by Sun Microsystems and is designed to be a
replacement for MS Office (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).

What’s the difference between MS Office and Open Office?

Well, one costs $370.00 and one costs $0.00.

Can you guess which is which?

One of the two releases upgrades every few years and
charges you full price for them. The other also releases
upgrades every few years and gives them away.

Which one sounds better to you?

If you are a business owner responsible for outfitting
5-10 or 20 computers with productivity software for
wordprocessing and spreadsheet work, you can’t afford NOT to
take a look at OpenOffice.org for your business.

Apart from the price benefit, here are some other huge
benefits to using Open Office: – PDFs are a cinch. Right now, MS Office can’t turn your
documents into PDFs without the help of third party
software. Perhaps the next upgrade (and YOUR next
$370.00) will provide this functionality, but right now
you’re out of luck. In Open Office, creating a PDF is as
simple as clicking one button. – Your data will NEVER be locked or rendered obsolete,
waiting for you to purchase the next upgrade to software
you’ve already paid for once. – Open Office is available for EVERY type of computer and
operating system under the sun. It comes in flavors for
Windows, Linux, Mac and a whole lot more… – Open Office is OPEN. That means it is customizable by you
for you. If you run a business and need a certain function
to be added, it is as simple as hiring a programmer and
telling them what you want changed. The whole thing is under
your control. – Open Office isn’t going anywhere. Backed by a community
of thousands upon thousands of users and developers, Open
Office is quickly becoming THE standard outside of the US,
where Microsoft’s marketing department seems to dominate
the airwaves.

So what if you own a Mac? How do you get your hands on a
copy of Open Office? Open Office is available for you in a
slightly different flavor called NeoOffice. You can download
it here:

http://www.neooffice.org

And now, the answer to the big question you are probably
asking…

Can I open Word documents and Excel spreadsheets with Open
Office?

YES YOU CAN! With all but a very few exceptions, all
versions of MS Word and Excel and Powerpoint documents will
open without incident in Open Office. If you are in a
highly specialized industry and use a lot of Word macros and
advanced layout features, just do a quick test. Most likely,
things will be fine…

So where do you get Openoffice.org?

The name says it all…

http://www.openoffice.org

Get your copy today!