Having waken up earlier than I have planned, I am surfing the web to kill some time. And I have found this article about Microsoft Office's support of the OpenDocument Format(ODF).
As its name implies, ODF is an open format that every applications can adopt. Imagine this, how many times have you got a file that only a proprietary application(something that costs money) can open/save to from your friends, and you have to write back to them to convert the format to another one which you can open with a free software?
If Microsoft is kind enough to implement this ODF into its office suite, then we may be able to use an alternative office suite(which is free) without any worries about incompatibilities. However, There might be a catch behind. Even if they implement ODF into Microsoft Office, we can never be sure whether they will try to manipulate the format once again. (Just look at what have they done with the WWW standards and you will know)
Well, if you also wish to get rid of the lock-down of Microsoft Office, perhaps this is the time for you to download OpenOffice.org(which is totally free! No catch) that supports ODF. But just be careful not to download version 1.1.5. The version that supports ODF is version 2.0 and above. Although it is still in its release canditate(rc) state, I think it is reasonably stable enough for daily use. For the safe bet, perhaps you should wait for one or two months before the official release comes out.
Microsoft must support OpenDocument
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