You and Me ... MS Free

Will somebody please write this book already?

Though I have a strange love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with MS, I will in fact probably never be MS-free myself ... there is exactly one website I regularly visit (a very poorly-written private company's secure site) that fails to function properly in anything but IE. And I own a copy of Office 2001 (given to me by Microsoft for training purposes, I do public demos of Mac stuff and at the time they felt that I ought to know MS Office as well. I agreed with them then, and still do now).

So while I can't be MS-free, you could be. And it's really not very hard. More on that in a bit.

First, I need to explain the "love" part of the love/hate relationship. Sure, it's easy to hate MS regardless of what platform you're on -- they're an abusive monopoly, they hold back standardization and innovation, they suck at security and most of their PC products are at best mediocre. They engage in all manner of low-life, low-class and downright illegal marketing tactics, they sit on competitors until they die, their advertising sucks wind, and Bill Gates' wife dresses him funny. And then, there's Monkey Boy, who has done more all by himself to force people to investigate the Mac than all those "Think Different" ads combined.

But the funny thing is, they treat their Mac customers great. If you want to see what Microsoft can really do when they actually try, run down to your local Apple Store or CompUSA and give the Mac version of MS Office v.X a spin. Particularly Entourage, a Mac-only product that every PC user I've shown it to drools over. It's downright cool.

Mac customers are largely immune to the security problems, virus problems and forced-registration, forced-disclosure, no-privacy policies that outrage and plague users of Windows. The Mac Business Unit of Microsoft, which is to Microsoft as Taiwan is to China, takes its time and does it right. The products run very well, are 100% PC compatible/interchangable, and work seamlessly with Apple's technologies (such as drag-n-drop and Quicktime) and those of other companies (such as Palm). (MS products playing well with others?! I hear you cry) None of this "must-use-Hotmail," "must-use-Passport," "must-use-Dot-Net" crap for the likes of us. If the lack of Office compatibility is what's keeping you from buying a Mac, there's no stopping you now.

In all, the Mac version of Office boasts dozens of features that simply do not exist on the Windows version, in addition to be virus-free and more secure. The products are by and large -- Jobs save me -- actually pretty cool and fun to use. There, I said it.

But even though Mac users enjoy a superior version of most MS products, there are still many of us -- particularly, it seems, Windows users -- who would like to be as MS-free as possible. There's a longstanding belief that the fewer MS products you have on your hard drive, the fewer crashes (and in the case of IE, I can testify to the truth of that). And more than a handful of people have "issues" with MS's appallingly poor corporate behaviour (they make Enron look simply childish by comparison). And yet more are just tired of seeing "MS We Own Everything and it's Still Not Enough" (tm) at every turn.

Indeed, it's highly ironic (but nonetheless true) that the single largest factor pushing PC users off Windows and into the arms of Linux or UNIX isn't those platforms' particular strengths, but simply a desire to get out from under the all-consuming shadow of the Microsoft juggernaught. Ironic because Microsoft repeatedly says it sees these platforms as the single biggest threat to their monopoly, and they are right.

But I digress.

So, you're read this far (thank you) and you're wondering how to be (more) MS-free. Well, friends, I'm happy to say that there are several good answers to that question, and one of them doesn't even involve much effort on your part. This will be old news to some of you, but I recently discovered ThinkFree Office (because they finally put out a Mac OS X version). I've been using it for a few days now, and I'm here to tell you -- it's MS Office, written in Java, at 1/10th the cost. Interested? Read on.

ThinkFree Office is real software. It comes in a box, on a CD. Or you can download a FREE 30-use trial and give it a spin yourself, which I strongly encourage you to do. It will not mess with, interfere, or otherwise muck up your system in any way. It's completely self-contained, so if you decide it's not for you, just drag the ThinkFree folder to the trash and you are done with it. But I doubt you'll do that if you give it an honest try.

This product reads and writes natively in MS Office format, and runs on Macs, Windows and Linux. In my few days of testing I have yet to encounter one problem or serious quirk. The program is very polished and gives you every feature of Word, Excel or Powerpoint that 99% of Office users actually use. I'm sure it's missing more than a few things that the $599 MS Office application has, but I haven't run across anything that I need, and my Office needs are what I'd call "typical." This is far and away the best all-Java program I've ever seen.

The best part is the price. It's $50. Let me repeat that: FIFTY DOLLARS, with the catch that you really should (but do not have to) renew your "subscription" to their "Cyberdrive" service (basically offline storage, upgrades and support) each year (another $50). That means you would have to use this program for more than 12 years for it to be less worth it than buying a copy of MS Office. Geez.

Did I mention that the $50/year includes all upgrades? Geez-O-Pete.

This program is perfect for individuals who need Office compatibility but don't need every bell & whistle MS stuffs into its package (which is, basically, all of us). It's affordable to everybody and yet nobody will ever know you're not using an MS product.

It's also a viable alternative to small businesses, schools and other institutions that cannot afford either a substantial outlay for software, a large ongoing service and training commitment, or who find Microsoft's new licensing terms onerous (and they are, btw).

Best of all, you're not a slave or a sheep anymore. Believe me, it's a good feeling dragging MS stuff to the trash ... sorry, recycle bin. You feel good because you're not pirating, you're supporting a small company and rewarding excellence and true innovation, you are helping lessen the dependency on Microsoft, you are holding MS's feet to the fire and promoting healthy competition and sane software prices. There are so many pluses to using ThinkFree Office I was beginning to think my modem got disconnected (obscure geek joke from the olden days).

Incidentally, there are other options as well. OpenOffice and StarOffice are out there, also offering MS Office-compatibility at a tiny fraction of the cost. The only reason I don't talk about them equally at length is because the former requires (at present) running an entirely different and much more complex OS than most of you Mac/Windows users would want to run, and because StarOffice ($80, supported by Sun, runs great on Windows) is not Mac-compatible (that's what OpenOffice will be trying to address) and so I've not been able to try it out. I hear it's great, but maybe a little too cutting-edge for most casual users.

Combine this with my sterling recommendation on Mozilla (Netscape 7 is out based on it, and looks to be a contender as well) as an IE-killer, and you are looking at not only a fairly easy and painless way to be largely MS-free, but one that offers numerous and substantial advantages over sticking with MS. You put absolutely nothing at risk by downloading these products and trying them out, and you stand to save yourself or your business literally hundreds of dollars per year, to say nothing of increased productivity due to less virus/hacking susceptability.

ThinkFree, StarOffice et al may not be the right thing for everyone, but I'm quite confident that most users of MS Office would find them worthwhile and attractive alternatives that allow them to keep their MS-compatibility with "the rest of the world" while offering them affordability, enthusiasm for upgrades and benefits undreamed of. Even if you don't find ThinkFree to be quite right for your needs, do a mitzvot (a Good Thing) and donate a copy to your local school, church/synagogue/mosque or charity. Donated software this good -- and a few minutes of your time training a staff person how to use it -- will be both appreciated and used, since it carries none of the legal or licensing baggage of MS.

Think (Different) about it.