You’ve been thinking about it for a while. You’ve seen the PDF converter and sighed longingly; you’ve blushed before the skeptical glances of your open-source and anti-Microsoft friends who say “You’re still using Microsoft Office?” you’re looking at your budget and wondering why you would pay to get Microsoft Office 2007. And you’ve received Word 2007 files and haven’t been able to open them, so you know there’s going to be some file format issues no matter what you do.

But you haven’t switched over to OpenOffice.org. Quite yet. I’m here to help. Think of this as a virtual guide, the written version of me coming over to your house on a Sunday afternoon to help get to know OpenOffice.org and figure out all the things you’re not quite sure about. Sit down with this article this weekend and in a few hours you’ll feel refreshed, open sourced, and able to hold your head high when you run into those roving gangs of open source supporters.

Why Switch?
You have your own reasons: price, or principles, or you’re setting up a nice cheap Linux laptop for your daughter to use at school. Here are a couple things I like to talk about.

Spend your money on something important
I realize that since I’m targeting this article at individuals, that the upgrade or full price of Microsoft Office might not make or break you. But if it’s you and your family; your small business; your volunteer organization that feeds homeless families…now you even more seriously need to look at the right way to spend your money. Microsoft Office is a habit, and many people don’t even think about whether they need it. Here’s your opportunity to rank it in comparison to other things you could spend $100 or $500 on, multiplied by the number of licenses.

Download pdf Switching Office Suites from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org