better

  As a responsible thinking individual I often like to play the : "What if?" game. Sometimes this game runs side by side with another question of, "Why is?". Pay attention now because I do not want to lose you. Let's start by thinking about a recent vacation that you or I may have taken. Perhaps we drove to our vacation location. Perhaps we took a plane or possibly even a boat or a train. No matter how it was that we arrived at our vacation spot, the trip to that location was not the reason for the vacation.

The Document Foundation just released version 5.3.0 of its fully open source office suite called LibreOffice. This release brings many new features and UI improvements. But here's the one thing that I must admit: I'm also a user of Microsoft Office. Yes - from the beginning of Microsoft to present day, I've relegated myself - just like so many others - to paying countless fees and payments for the - deep breath here - privilege - of using their software. That deep breath made me pause and consider why I use LibreOffice when I am forking over so much money per year to Microsoft. I'm an unabashed open source and Linux fan - as well you all know - but I am also kind of stupidly robotic when it comes to the - weapons of personal destruction - that I use. I use what I have become accustom to using. So I decided to look at the most practical reasons for using LibreOffice. In short, in order to help myself to look at the practical reasons for making a total switch to LibreOffice - perhaps those reasons could be of value to you as well. So let's take an in depth look at LibreOffice.

Ok the most obvious advantage of LibreOffice is that it is open source and free to download. Eh, OK, that doesn't say a whole lot to me. I guess I have that interminable inner belief that anything free must not be of any value. Yeah, even me, sitting here writing an article on a site that I freely give away my Peach OSI distros day after day, year after year working countless hours trying to create a better operating system - and here I sit saying that something free must not have value. So I have to look at why I do what I do and maybe that will give me some insight into why the people at The Document Foundation do what they do for LibreOffice. It's pretty simple really, at least it is for me. As far as a reason for Peach OSI - I wanted a free, safe and easy to use operating system that I myself could use without being tied into a constant pay to play scheme. Hum - I couldn't have said that better.... But let us set the free part aside and look at what may very well be the best reasons to making the switch to LibreOffice, whether you're a normal PC user or an entire educational organization with hundreds - if not thousands - of daily document producing individuals. Click on the Read Me below to read the entire article.