Don't waste money on Microsoft Office

Yesterday's Post Courier came with a Courts Furniture lift out. I was horrified to see what Courts furniture is charging for Microsoft Office 2007. The price was around Eight Hundred Kina.

There are Open Source Freeware alternatives available like Open Office. It offers all the basic Microsoft packages like Office 2007 but does not cost you anything to own it. The major draw back in that it is around 120 Megabyte download, so the average Papua New Guinean dial up connection would take forever and a day to download this software.

If you were to do the sums it would be a hell of a lot cheaper to go to somewhere like Datec, etc and get them to download Open Office for you. Then it would be to buy it and the best thing about it is that you could give it to all of your family and friends to use legally without infringing any copyright laws.

So may be next time before you rush out to by Microsoft Office what work out how much it is going to cost you to download, and if you could get someone else to split the cost with you it becomes even cheaper.