Don’t buy software

November 17, 2008 by Lonny.

Two friends recently asked me which version of Microsoft Office they should buy. They hoped to be able to get by with the “Educational” version (which sells for far less than retail).

I asked them why they needed Office. I looks from them, as if to say, “Well, doesn’t everyone in the whole world need Office?”.

I give them alternate advice, but lose them in a fog of geek speak. They don’t recover, and drive to nearest retail outlet and buy the first copy of Microsoft Office that the 19-year old salesperson tells them is “good”.

In this economy, I can’t imagine why anyone would spend a dollar more than they absolutely had to – particularly when many alternatives are better.

Two types of applications

  1. Desktop application: This software is installed on your computer. It runs directly from your own machine. The data you create with a “desktop app” is saved on your own computer somewhere.
  2. Web application: No installation is needed. You sign-up with an email address and create an account with the company that offers the web app. Web apps can cost money, but usually in the form of a small monthly payment. For example, Basecamp, a popular web app that is used for project planning, has plans ranging from free to $149/month.

Advantages of web apps

  1. Not tied to one computer: Committing your data to a single computer is not only counter-productive, but even dangerous. You’ve heard the horror stories of hard-drive failure. While no one should trust a web app entirely, most reliable web apps are managed by a team of computer gurus who, quite likely, know far more about data storage than you or I. Many online web apps allow you to export your data for traditional backup.
  2. Easy to share: You may want to quickly share some favorite bookmarks, or a list of your favorite songs. You may also want to collaborate with just a few people, not the entire internet. Web apps easily allow you to do this.

The Office dilemma

Unless your employer requires Microsoft Office, avoid it.  I’m not degrading Office (I have 3 versions of it), but most people don’t have a reason to use it.

If you want a desktop app you can use on your machine that is equally as powerful as Microsoft Office, use Sun’s OpenOffice. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation creator (PowerPoint equivalent), database creator, and a great drawing tool. (See them all here).

However, I’d recommend Google Docs, a free web-based mini-suite of similar apps. While not as strong as Office or OpenOffice, it’s dead simple to use. If you need to write a letter, create a simple document, chart some stocks, Google docs is great. It makes it very easy to share and collaborate with others. Why email a document for someone to proofread and comment on? Just share it with Google Docs and give that person rights to edit it. Don’t worry, your prior versions are still saved.

There’s also Zoho Apps, a more robust online solution, although not as widely used perhaps.

Microsoft has been slowly moving Microsoft Office itself online. In the near future, you won’t “buy” Office, but rent it month-to-month online..

Think I’m out on a limb? Even Time Magazine recommends you try an web app.

Email

I recommend switching to an online web-based email provider. You might have fetched your email online before and thought it was a pain. That’s likely because you were using the web-based interface that your email host (or internet provider) setup for you.

Time to switch. Try Gmail. It’s free. It’s superior to many others. I estimate my time spent on email has dropped in half since using it. Most email problems people have would be eliminated if they were using Gmail.

It doesn’t mean you have to switch email addresses. You can use Gmail to manage your existing email addresses. Here’s a great comparison if you need more proof. Here’s information to help you migrate your old Outlook-based email to Gmail.

If you simply can’t make the switch to an online web app to handle your email, then before you spend any money on Outlook, download and use Thunderbird. Version 3.0+ is better than Outlook.

Inspiration

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Commentary

  1. MaisaNo Gravatar says:
    November 18, 2008 at 6:27 am

    Hi Lonny!

    I REALLY enjoyed this post!
    I like how you easily connect some reality of people totally behind with the benefits available online, that, surprisingly enough had been ignored for so many, still.

    This post reminds me of a recent fact that happened here in Brasil:

    I’ve got to see a Government job exam with around 8 Tech questions and ALL of them were about Microsoft Office: how do you save a document using a short cut? – I won’t even start, cause it just gets worse.

    There are places and people still far behind when it comes to the usage of technology. And even the ones aware of its existence have quite of hard time trusting specially Cloud Computing features.

    There are tons of tools available as you so well pointed to be used right away, from any computer just as good -and sometimes much better- than any traditional tool. It’s just a matter of letting yourself to try them.

    If you have the time to take a look at icloud, I’ll be glad to hear your impressions of it!

    Take care,

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