Get Off Microsoft

True to form, Microsoft is spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) to stall efforts to standardize on a more open document format supported by other applications.

I think we can all benefit by watching Microsoft thrash about in this new “services wave” while we choose alternatives among the service offerings of the likes of Google, Yahoo, Apple, and hundreds or even thousands of new startups that turn the internet itself into a platform.

Microsoft’s free services won’t replace its commercial software and therefore won’t make a difference.

Microsoft demonstrated its Windows Live service to the top 200 journalists and analysts in the computer industry at a conference today [Nov. 1, 2005] in San Francisco, and the demo failed.

Would the switch to Open Source software — or for that matter, anything that’s not Microsoft — be as attractive or even more attractive to individual/home computer users than business users?

My test results point out the folly of relying on benchmarks that measure performance outside the norm. If the difference between one program’s save and another program’s save is the blink of an eye, there is no difference.

Don’t base your choice of OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office on such as simple comparison as George Ou’s test.

This major overhaul of OpenOffice.org adds OpenDoc support and a database.