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Choosing Microsoft Products May Cost 10-40% More
securitas writes "Jupiter Research has issued a report that says businesses that choose to stay with Microsoft products may end up paying anywhere from 10%-40% more than if they chose another solution. Software Assurance clients will see the lowest costs and SA-have-nots will see the highest costs. The rationale is that Microsoft's strategy of integrating server and client software, as it has done with the new Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office 2003 suite, will force costly upgrades and licenses. Ultimately the goal is to transform Office into a platform instead of a collection of applications. Analyst Joe Wilcox says, "Microsoft argues that increased integration will cut down ongoing costs, maintenance and what not, but whether that will be the case has yet to be seen. The increased acquisition costs, though, are pretty clear." This leaves the door open for other office suites like Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarOffice and OpenOffice. More on costs and integration at Jupiter/Wilcox's Microsoft Monitor Blog."
FuckMicrosoft.com has the largest list of Microsoft-alternative software that I have ever seen.
This leaves the door open for other office suites like Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarOffice and OpenOffice.
IIRC, MS Office costs anywhere from 2 or 3 times, in the case of WP, to 00 (that should be an infinity, but two zeros side by side is the best I could do) times, in the case of OOo, as much as MS Office. To my recollection, MS Office has always cost lots more than its competitors, but plenty of people still buy it and plenty of people frown at the idea of a "work-alike" or whatever you want to call it. As much as I would like to see Corel, Sun and OOo eat MS's lunch on the office suite (and I think we are approaching that) there is lots of inertia to overcome.