Sunday, March 23, 2008

Library2Play Thing #18 -Beyond Microsoft Office


I took a look at Open Office - D/L it takes over an hour.

Do I want to tie up my computer for an hour to D/L a program I don't really need and don't have an incentive to learn?

No, not at the moment. Scuttlebutt says that the district may opt out of Microsoft in the future and go to Open Office as the platform of choice. When that happens I'll teach myself Open Office.

Google Docs is interesting - unlike my Dell PDA, my iphone does not come with a word processing program so I can see some future uses. That is, I can once I get used to typing with my thumbs. I'm still a "pointer"

The concept is downright radical - thumb your nose at the 500 lb Gorilla that is Microsoft and create something free that anyone can use. My 25 year old
web designer daughter says Microsoft is the devil and has as little to do with Windows products as possible. She's also a Web2.0 poster child.

The folks at
Technorati had the same idea -the people are the ones determining what is newsworthy, not the news media. Similar thought process with Wikipedia. No more expensive reference books, let the people create their own reference books.

Power to the People - the 1960s have returned!

1 comment:

RCELibrarian said...

The open office items will be on your new laptop...then it will be much easier to explore! I too did NOT download on my home computer. I used a district loadset to explore! Not too bad...