How To Live Free - Part 3 of 5: OS and Office, less the MS
Look around and you will see that PC graveyards are growing and growing. It’s not like you need the new specs, but Microsoft and software vendors of the like tell you what you need to run their programs. At times I can care less if I am running 32 bit or 64 bit. I don’t play video games or do I need to watch high definition streaming video on all of my computers. However, it is part of the deal that Microsoft has made with AMD and Intel to keep them in business and to help their stock price.
This is why I love Ubuntu. You can load Ubuntu on a PII processor pc and get out of it the same that you would if you loaded Vista. You may not get that high end definition, but why do you need that surfing the web or creating a document. Be realistic. If you into saving the world, recycle a PC. To be honest with you I have converted all but my main work laptop over to Ubuntu and I am not missing a thing. Little things that I have taken advantage of like downloading flash so I can watch interactive websites I have to do over again, but for the most part I am very happy running Linux.
Now office is a different story. First let me tell you that Open office is equal to MS Office. And get this, it is for free. Why isn’t everyone jumping on this deal? I tell you why. Anyone who has prepared for a presentation or created a document is scared of something happening at the time of saving their doc or presenting their presentation. Let me tell you that open office has never let me down. I used open office when I was in college with great results. It never let me down so I can tell you the next time you think about spending over $300 for an ms office license, just jump to open office. You will not be disappointed.
All of this for the price of $0.