Why Microsoft Word?

(no Robert content here, sorry)

I was talking with a long-distance friend last week. Her computer was running slow and she thought removing some unused software might help speed it up. But she accidentally removed Microsoft Word in the process of cleaning up. She asked if I had a disk that she could borrow to reinstall from. I hunted around but couldn’t find anything very recent so I suggested she just download OpenOffice. She was a little dubious but went ahead and did that.

The next time I talked with her she reported that OpenOffice passed her tests (I’d warned her that it might not be perfect for heavily formatted files or the very latest version of Word files): she could edit and print her files. Then she asked why people spend hundreds of dollars for Word or similar software when there were free alternatives.

I had trouble thinking of any reason for a home user (and writer) like her. I did point out that larger organizations often feel more comfortable with the idea of support from Microsoft (I didn’t think to point out that the support is often difficult to access and may not really help much). And those organizations may feel the need to be compatible with the latest and greatest file formats (though not many organizations upgrade to the latest and greatest quickly).

So I really had some trouble with her question and I wonder if the inertia of always using Word is the real reason so many copies are sold and installed on PCs (of course Word is often bundled with the purchase of a new PC so the cost is hard to see and clearly much less than retail).

The best answers I could come up with that there was no marketing behind OpenOffice other than word of mouth and that OpenOffice is a late comer in terms of a really solid, stable, compatible alternative — in my opinion, it is all three now but has not been for too many years.

You may want to give OpenOffice a spin: it’s more than just a word processor, it also includes a spreadsheet program, presentation program, drawing program and database program. If you try it out and find it useful, consider donating time or money to the project. If it doesn’t work for, just remove it.