Breaking the Word Chain | Online

In the beginning there was word—Microsoft Word—and then it just wouldn't open! That's Microsoft Office Suite for you! With easy access—sometimes free—to the newer version of MS Office Suite, it's easy to be tempted to install the latest and discard the old versions. A quick run to a friend's house or to the nearest software vendor and you can easily get your hands on the latest (although, pirated) version. But, most of the times, along with the recent and so proclaimed 'state-of-the-art-features' comes hassles and unwanted tensions and compatibility issues.

Logic dictates that a file created by a software can be opened by its modified versions regardless of the number of modifications. But in the case of MS Office Suite, this logic stands out like a sore thumb. For example, the default file format for MS Word 2007 isn't supported by the older versions. It gets more frustrating when, even the latest version cannot open the older version files with an excuse of 'corrupted file' or many other colorful remarks. So, at times like these, what can you do beside cursing and reinstalling the older version or switching off the damn computer? Chill out, dude. Stop that infernal swearing and gear up: It's time for a change.

But how? With your world limited to nothing more than MS Office Suites, your only excuse is that you don't have the time or simply the inclination to look around for alternatives. Let us enlighten you by saying that there are alternatives, and plenty of them. The mightiest being OOo or Openoffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org/). The best open source productivity suite, openoffice.org is nearly identical to MS Office, the only difference being, if we may say so, the extra added punch. Like the MS Office Suite, it comes packaged with productivity tools with more creative feature names. There's 'Writer' for word processing, 'Calc' for spreadsheets and 'Impress' for creating presentations. With interface and menus like the MS Office Suite, openoffice.org is the best choice if you wish to move away from the terror and frustration of your old productivity suite.

For people, who are on the move constantly and for whom internet connection is not a problem, but bulky CDs and virus infected pen-drives are a headache, the Google docs & spreadsheets (http://docs.google.com) could be a better alternative. It's basically an online desktop, which operates in almost the same way as any other office productivity suites. The great thing in Google docs has got to be its accessibility and collaboration features. Documents can be accessed from any computer with an internet access. It cuts the need to carry CDs and pen drives around. It also lets multiple users make changes to the same document simultaneously. And that feature, for people who feel locked out of their own document, just because someone else is also working on it, is all about productivity, indeed.