I agree wholeheartedly.
There's no reason why the basic needs of 95% of computer users shouldn't be met with free software. As a bonus, it will force commercial software to improve sufficiently that it provides a value above that of the free variety.
marker
The article inadvertently points out the biggest drawback to trying to use open source.
They reference Scribus, which sounds like something I’d like to play with. So I hit the Scribus page.
http://www.scribus.net/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=2
It says first I need to download Ghostscript. They specify that you have to use gswin32c.exe, not gswin32.exe. I hit the link they provide. I bunch of releases of 32.exe, but no 32e.exe on the page.
Dead end.
Then I searched Sourceforge for the specified program. “
No results were found to match your current search criteria.”
Google it. Find a promising link to UWisc. Nope, just the 32.exe again, not the 32c.
Give up.
Open Office is an excellent cost cutting measure that makes for a viable alternative to the $300+ MS Office suite about 75% of the time, and maybe even more than that in an educational environment. We did this at my children’s small, privately funded Christian school where the two choices we had were Open Office or nothing. I am right now in the midst of putting together our elementary computer lab, and the donated machines that don’t have a Windows license are getting PC Linux 2007 and Open Office put on them.
That’s like my Grandma.
She’ll drive 100 miles to save 3 cents a gallon on gas.