The Stavdals

Until a couple of years ago, I was ignorantly entangled in an apparant dependency upon expensive software such as MS Office. Also at the school where I work, Ekrehagen skole, an investment was made a few years ago in purchasing licences for MS OS and MS Office, but at present I'm wondering if the smartest would be to reconsider. Now I'm convinced supporting free software will contribute to paving the way for a situation where the costs are brought to a minimum and where optimal user functionality is ensured.

Open Office versus MS Office....I know what I want!

OpenOffice.org 2 is by far the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It's available in many languages, also Norwegian. Although I've been an ardent user of MS Office ever since 1995, I decided to give Open Office a chance about a year ago, and I like it.

Here are my arguments for propping up Open Office:

1. It's free - you save a few thousand NOK (bet. 1000 - 5000 NOK depending upon the MS version)
2. Open Office supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office '97-2003 formats, among many others.
3. Its functionality is highly compatible with MS Office and it is user friendly, actually resembles MS Office 2003.
4. I want to own and have access to my "office" files in the future (see No. article on it-nytt where Petter Reinholdtsen expresses his concern over MS file accessibility) As a matter of fact, older MS Office documents cannot be opened in the newer versions. Shouldn't my MA thesis be accessable more than ten years!? I believe my files should be stored for generations to come! In the presently unlikely scenario of an MS closure, MS files will be lost forever. One would think the preservation of files should be independent of the existence of the supplier of the software. (Reinholdsen represents NUUG and is one of the initiaters of the Norwegian School-Linux project). His general opinion on the subject is clearly expressed here (in Norwegian).

Forget MS Explorer! Go for Opera or Firefox instead!

Even the most adhering Microsoft supporter would have to accept that Internet Explorer has been plagued with security problems. IE has a particular security risk because it utilizes Microsoft's ActiveX. Additionally, IE poses a security risk because it is too close to the core of the Windows OS. As far as my grasp of this reaches, I've learnt that such closeness is not a good thing; it means that a hacker who breaks into IE may not only have hacked your browser but may also be able to gain access to the operating system itself.

Firefox is not exempt from flaws and as its popularity has increased, these flaws are emerging. The reason for this is partly the fact that, unlike IE, the Firefox source code is open source and can be checked for flaws by hackers. Nevertheless, Mozilla has shown itself to be very forthcoming at fixing reported flaws. Often flaws have been amended within less than a week. No doubt, this is a far cry from Microsoft's poor track record.

Moreover, If you are not using Windows XP/Vista, Microsoft has deserted you. Internet Explorer 7 is only available to those using Windows XP SP2 or later. Actually, if you don't use Windows XP, this alone is sufficient reason to look for an alternative to Internet Explorer.

My last reason to swap to Opera or Firefox, is that Internet Explorer is far less configurable. Personally, I prefer Opera as it is faster, uses less memory and is extremely configurable in addition to an integrated email-client that I've been very happy with. Alternatively, in my experience, Mozilla Thunderbird is absolutely top notch compared to MS Outlook Express.

(My appreciation to the author of webaksess.no, it-nytt.no and Bjørn Venn for opening my eyes to the world of free software)

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