S
ometimes it can seem like Microsoft has a stranglehold on your
daily life. Whether you’re a fl ush Wall Street trader or a starving
artist, you probably had to shell out the same $400-plus for a copy of
Microsoft Offi ce. But if you’re willing to stray from the herd, you can
get much of the same document-creating power without plunking
down a dime.
For years now, a cavalcade of companies has offered free alterna-
tives to Microsoft’s wallet-crushing Office suites. Today, two of the
leading choices are Google Docs & Spreadsheets and OpenOffice.org.Google offers an online-only option, while OpenOffice installs to your
hard drive in tried-and-true fashion. Both offer robust, intuitive inter-
faces to handle the most common types of business documents.
As much as we love the notion of free software, we’d rather pay
through the nose than put up with half-baked apps. So we put these
two challengers through their paces to see whether one can stand
up to Microsoft’s monolithic business apps. Here’s how the death-
match went down.Google Docs & Spreadsheets vs.
OpenOffice.org
AVAILABILITY
Getting your hands on either
Google Docs or OpenOffice.org
is as easy as browsing to a web
page. Google Docs lets you start
editing instantly after you go to
http://docs.google.com and log in to
(or create) your Google account.
OpenOffice.org has its URL right
in its name, so just browse to the
eponymous website and click “get
OpenOffice.org,” select your OS,
and download the install file. If
you live in a yurt on the Mongolian
plains, you can order OpenOffice.
org install CDs from a number of
vendors for about $5 apiece. It’s
nice to have an offline option, but
we prefer instant gratification.
WINNER: GOOGLE DOCS &
SPREADSHEETShead 2 headTWO TECHNOLOGIES ENTER, ONE TECHNOLOGY LEAVES
round^1
BY ROBERT STROHMEYER14 MAXIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2007
FREE OFFICE SUITES
GOOGLE DOCS & SPREADSHEETS
Free, http://docs.google.comACCESSIBILITY
A document editor is useful only
if you can actually get to it (and
to the documents it’s meant to
edit). You have to be online to
use Google Docs, which pretty
much rules out this option for
business travelers who like to
work on the plane. Plus, Google
Docs can only work on files
you’ve uploaded to Google (or
created in Google Docs), which
adds an extra step every time
you want to work with a new
file. OpenOffice.org, on the
other hand, can be configured
as your default app for its sup-
ported file types, which lets
it launch automatically every
time you double-click a Word
or Excel document you receive
from a coworker. If you have
Google Toolbar installed, you
can configure it to open Google
Docs whenever you click a sup-
ported document, but again,
this works only if you’re online.
WINNER: OPENOFFICE.ORGround^2