Applications ignore one another

You can hear the plaintive call all over the office: I have just received a PowerPoint presentation, but I can’t edit it. What can I do, what can I do?

You can do a lot, if you realize a few things.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a component of Microsoft Office, used for presentations and slideshows. Microsoft Office itself is a complete suite of applications similar to Lotus 123 for spreadsheets, and WordPerfect for word processing.

The problem with Microsoft Office and other proprietary data formats is compatibility – or the lack thereof. The computer industry has very few standards that benefit the consumer. There are thousands of standards for the computer workings and components to make a computer but diddlysquat for the end-user. Microsoft would like to have their Office product line be the standard, Corel would like WordPerfect in that position, and so on and so on.

In the bustle and haste, this leaves the users scratching their heads trying to keep up.

Which package do we purchase with our hard-earned dollars? What if we don’t like it, or if it doesn’t work for our purposes? Can I return it? Guess what – no. To be fair, that is not a blanket statement. Most retailers will put up a fuss for software returns, and will not accept them. But not all of them will refuse. The issue is straightforward: what’s to stop us from buying software, installing it, copying it and registering it – only to return it and get our money back – while still having a fully functioning copy at home. Imagine the next person to purchase your returned item – when they try to register it and it fails the registration. Of course, they can always call software support, but it would still be an annoyance.

As with anything successful, there is always something new to come along and copy it, or try to improve upon it. There are alternatives to Microsoft Office, to Microsoft itself, in fact – but that’s another story.

Two relatively new players in the game are Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and OpenOffice.org.

Google’s solution offers a word processor, and a spreadsheet solution. Both are completely free.

OpenOffice.org has slightly more applications in their suite, including a word processor program, a spreadsheet program, a slideshow program, a mathematical function creator program, a database program and a drawing utility.

Google’s offering doesn’t require any downloads or installation of software, while OpenOffice.org does. Once again, though, it’s free.

If you just need to view Microsoft Office created files, you may download the free viewers for Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access. If you need to edit those files, use the free solutions from Google and OpenOffice.org.