I’ve finally thrown MS Office physically off my machine with my (forced) rebuild for Leopard. I still have iWork and NeoOffice installed. But I really don’t use them either. The only thing that i might use is a spreadsheet program to juggle some numbers.

As for work I think MS Office has done more harm than good. Spreadsheets make mediocrity the norm. We use them far too often to replace (needed) process and dedicated software. And who hasn’t resented PowerPoint for giving even the worst presenter a tool to do presentations even worse! Word-processing is nice but (seriously) in a working world wouldn’t it be nicer if we still had text only and people would focus 80% of their time on content and not on layout and bug-fixing?

There’s one thing to say for Google-Docs though. They are great for collaboration. Multiple people can edit the same document nearly real time. So if you’re working cross continent on (e.g.) a book take Skype and Google Docs and away you go.

So my tipp is, just chuck the software off your drive and install it when you need to use it. Or if you know that you will need it have a list handy (can be a sticky on Dashboard – DON’T use Excel!) and note when you use what software. After a few months go through the list and weed out/replace what is not used.

Cheers Oliver

@Maria: Try pages and skip NeoOffice. NeoOffice is just another MS Office (though free). iWork is so much more fun! And who doesn’t want fun when working?

I’ve been tempted to try Google’s software, but I simply cannot be tied down to an application that requires Internet access. I do too much traveling off-the-grid.

I’m going to try the NeoOffice software that everyone’s been raving about. And I really do need to install and try Pages.

Anyway, thanks (as always) for the link!