No, it's not!

Lately, I've become very interested in alternatives to the traditional Microsoft Office Suite of applications.  You know, the ever useful, standardized, and famous Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications.  These are great computer programs, make no mistake.  There is definitely a reason why they have become the standard for office applications world wide.

There is, however, the problem of money.  For normal folks, Microsoft Office isn't exactly cheap.  The educational price is in the $130 range for students and educators buying personal copies.  Buying it off the shelf starts at $200 and goes up to $500 per copy depending on who you are and what version you want.  Adding Office to the purchase of a brand new computer will still cost you at least $100.

So what does it cost for, say, a school district to purchase Microsoft Office for every computer?  Fortunately, the prices we pay for district or school agreements with Microsoft are drastically reduced.  Many schools and districts have yearly subscription agreements with Microsoft that allow them to put the latest version of office on every computer, which typically costs $20 - $30 per computer per year.  While that seems really cheap, it isn't when you consider that it is a yearly cost for hundreds or possibly thousands of computers. 

It's typical for elementary schools to have about 200 computers in them.  It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a fairly small school district of 4 schools to have a total of 1000 computers that need Microsoft Office.  At a cost of $25 per computer per year, that is $25,000 per year spent simply on Microsoft Office software licensing!  Suddenly we see why Microsoft is one of the richest companies in the world.

I happen to think that a school district could do more interesting things with that money, provided that we have an alternative that gives us similar enough functionality.  Probably the most important functionality that a district couldn't do with out would be the ability to save files in the native Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats.  After that, you would typically want the alternative program to work similarly to the Office applications, so that the training issue doesn't become insurmountable.

With that in mind, take a look at three alternatives that I am really excited about!  All three offer personal use of their web-based applications for free as well as free space on-line to store files.  Check them out, and don't be terribly surprised if the organization that you work for looks into moving to them in the future to save money!

Google Docs
ThinkFree
ZOHO