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How much are you paying for software licensing? Funny that you should ask...
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With 90 percent of the desktop PC market running some version of Windows you would be correct to conclude that Microsoft has a monopoly share of the market. Ditto for Microsoft Office. What you may not realize is how much you are paying in software license fees to Microsoft. Have you considered using an alternative operating system and office suite that would be free or inexpensive? OpenOffice.org is a suite of applications that can use Microsoft Office file formats so none of your Microsoft Office files will be orphaned. OpenOffice.org is free and included in many Linux distributions. It runs on Windows and Linux so you can try it out without abandoning Windows. Open source software... free as in free speech, not as in free beer. What's going on with Linux? Should you be afraid to use it? Today, Linux is the fastest growing operating system in the world. Linux and the Apache Web server became the “killer application” which contributed mightily to the success of the World Wide Web. All good things to be sure, but why should you care? Open source software can be copied and distributed without charge. Developers contribute code to various open source projects (over 75,000 projects are registered on SourceForge.net). The point is not to re-invent the wheel every time you need a piece of software and to encourage the sharing of program code. You typically just pay for support and/or maintenance if the project sponsor is setup to do that or if a third party offers support as a paid service. When evaluating solutions to any software computing need, it now pays to look at both proprietary and open source alternatives. Free is good.