The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has advised schools against upgrading to Windows Vista or Microsoft Office 2007 because of the prohibitive cost and interoperability issues.
IBM has launched a commercially supported version of its Lotus Symphony productivity suite, ready to take on Microsoft Office.
Microsoft will add native support to Office 2007 for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) instead of OOXML because of compatibility issues but Microsoft refuses to admit that ODF has won the document format war.
Microsoft admits it had no knowledge of software standards until deep into its bid to get Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization -- but there are no regrets over its tactics during the process.
Microsoft on Thursday said it will make application programming interfaces (APIs) for Office and Windows Server available free of charge, in a move designed to make its products work better with software from other providers, including open-source communities.
The software company has made a big show about opening up its APIs, but has it really changed its stance towards open source?
Many free and inexpensive office suites are available for download or for use in a web browser. So what's the advantage of paying a pretty penny for a desktop office suite? Corel's WordPerfect Office X4 offers a strong software package that comes closest to the breadth and depth of features found in Microsoft Office.
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