. . . cont'd from Hot News That's right Mr. McNabb. Not much innovation. Not much instability either. No macro viruses. Lots of compatibility. Perfect for small business that have absolutely no use for so-called document collaboration or the unproductive bloat of Microsoft Office. The bloat is unproductive because it takes too long, too often, to wade through massive dialogs in order to find the controls and settings needed to make various components of Microsoft Office work the way you want them to work. Microsoft's innovative development efforts for its Office products are financed in large measure by budget-straining retail pricing and shockingly high enterprise license prices. It stands to reason no doubt. You can't make enormous plans, employ the thousands of people needed to execute the plans, and pay them all with beach sand. But just as great technologies for everyday use filter down from larger, more complex and more expensive project and products, so too do more compact and efficient software tools filter down from the massive footprints left behind by Microsoft and others. Hence, the programming fairies begat OpenOffice.org 2.0.

If you understand that "simplicity" in this case is a relative term (OpenOffice Writer, for instance, is a very powerful word processor by any definition), then OpenOffice.org 2.0 is an exceedingly viable alternative to Microsoft Office.

Microsoft didn't invent everything you see in its Office products. Far from it in fact, but that's not a criticism either—it's an observation. Everybody can't be the inventor of everything they touch or embrace. It's impossible. But Microsoft's programmers are every bit as inventive as the Office suite imitators who work on OpenOffice.org. The correct answer to any question about whether Microsoft's imitation is more or less worthy than OpenOffice.org's imitation of other office software is moot of course. All of the software developers in the world imitate other things they see when it comes to creating programming code. They're not all brilliantly innovative designers and inventors. That's not a crime; nor is it a reason to disparage the individuals.

I think Forrester Research is a big corporation which in its own way has to take a stance which in fundamental ways supports the corporate status quo. That does not necessarily make Forrester's observations somewhat suspect in certain situations though. Forrester offered an opinion of OpenOffice.org 2.0 without fully fleshing out in its "IT Quick Take" that the fundamental value of OpenOffice 2.0 for home-office and small business lies in the suite's comparative simplicity. If you understand that "simplicity" in this case is a relative term (OpenOffice Writer, for instance, is a very powerful word processor by any definition), then OpenOffice.org 2.0 is an exceedingly viable alternative to Microsoft Office.

Go and buy what you want or download OpenOffice.org 2.0. Before making the decision however, make sure you perform an honest assessment of your needs. Print out the important productivity feature lists for each suite. Create a comprehensive list of your office software document production and work environment needs. Compare your list to the productivity feature lists for each suite. Choose the suite that most closely matches your list. It's that simple.

Don't write off OpenOffice.org 2.0 because a professional critic states that it lacks innovation. Lack of innovation is not an indictment. As a matter of fact, embracing the state of the art often confers more headaches than benefits. Think about it.

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