When it comes to office software—word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, etc.—Microsoft Office far and away dominates the market so thoroughly that most people are unaware of any alternatives. There are, however, other office software suites out there. This article will explain the range of options available to you.
First, the Microsoft Office Suite is by far the most common office software. The basic office suite consists of Word, Excel (spreadsheets), PowerPoint (presentation), and Outlook (email). Other office programs are available, however, such as Access for databases, Publisher for desktop publishing, Visio for flowcharting and Expression for web design, along with a host of more specialized programs like Project, InfoPath, OneNote, SharePoint, etc. The Microsoft Office Suite is powerful, fully featured, and very flexible. Office documents are interchangeable between the different office programs, which have been a major selling point for years, and one of the reasons why MS Office has become so dominant. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is also expensive, costing about $500 dollars per license. Furthermore, new versions come out every few years, requiring another expensive upgrade to stay current with the world of business documents.
Following as a distant second in the office software race, IBM’s Lotus SmartSuite is still found in many offices throughout the world. The Lotus SmartSuite includes Word Pro, Lotus 1-2-3 (spreadsheet), Freelance (presentation), Approach (database), Organizer (information manager), and FastSite (website design). Supporters of Lotus SmartSuite claim it has all the features of Microsoft Office, including interchangeability of documents between office programs, as well as some features not found in MS Office. Lotus SmartSuite can read and write MS Office documents, although MS Office can only read a few vintage Lotus file formats. This lack of compatibility may have been a big factor in the slow decline of Lotus SmartSuite’s popularity.
The most recent Lotus release was the SmartSuite Millennium Edition released in 1999, although updates have been released almost yearly since then. At $300 per license, it is still expensive, but significantly cheaper than Microsoft Office. Lotus SmartSuite runs on Windows 2000 and XP, but currently not Vista. In 2007, IBM announced it would be releasing a new office suite called Lotus Symphony.
Sun Microsystems’s StarOffice is another contender in the office software race. The StarOffice Suite includes StarWriter (word processing), StarCalc (spreadsheet), StarImpress (presentation), StarBase (database), StarDraw (graphic design), and StarMath (a formula generator). StarOffice offers a full list of features, interchangeability between office programs, and can generate PDF and Flash formats of documents (a feature MS Office lacks). The most recent version, StarOffice 9 released in 2008, supports reading and writing of Microsoft Office file formats. MS Office, however, cannot read StarOffice documents.
A StarOffice license costs about $35, and is per person, not per machine (as in MS Office), and each person can install StarOffice on up to five computers. For example, a small business owner can install StarOffice on their office Windows PC and Linux or Mac computer, their home computer, and their laptop, all for the cost of just one licensing fee.
Finally, there is OpenOffice, an open-source office suite available for free and rapidly gaining in popularity. Offering all the features of comparable MS Office programs (and sporting some features similar MS Office programs lack), many feel OpenOffice is as good as or even better than the Microsoft Office Suite. Similar to StarOffice, OpenOffice includes Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), Base (database), Impress (presentation), and Draw (graphic design). OpenOffice supports a vast array of file formats, including reading and writing MS Office files. With similar functionality to MS Office at no cost, OpenOffice is a fine choice for a small business on a tight budget.
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