More About Software Addiction

As long as we're talking about software, let's mention the standard "office package" that many people think they need to survive. MS Office in its many configurations usually consists of Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, contact management and data base programs. Some packages include so-called Publishing, photography management, web site development and other programs that I put in the "might be nice, but do you really need them category".

If you want to take the time to look at these programs one at a time, you will realize that they are for the most part loaded with features that you may never use, but more to the point most people don't even know that they have. I guarantee that if you go out and buy one of those door stopper manuals that the aftermarket provides because the software developers don't, you will find mind boggling features that you will strain your mind to figure out what you would even do with them. At a Microsoft (MS) seminar about ten years ago, we were told that users on the average take advantage of about 10% of the capabilities of the programs.

Some of the programs I have I almost have to relearn in order to use them because I don't use them often enough for them to be intuitive. I don't have a Data Base, except of course my contact manager, which even though it is in MS Outlook is nothing but a database in a pre-formatted form. I don't use Access for anything and the couple of times I tried I found it difficult and confusing. But that is the problem with a lot of software. The developers have given all of this whiz-bang technology, but it isn't intuitive and it tends to be unstable

I am doing this article on something called Google Docs & Spreadsheets. I can transfer this to my blog because it is writing the text into HTML. This is advantages in a lot of ways, but the important thing is that it's doing it without any extra effort on my part. I can actually assign collaborators, co-workers that would have permission to edit or change this document (and I'm sure my copy editor A-Rob wishes I would). what makes it a little clumsy is formatting it into a letter form or using it for extremely long manuscripts. But I have even more options than this program and MS Word for word processing. There is an Office Suite Program called Open Office that is available free at www.openoffice.org. I also have a version of Word Perfect 12 that came with my computer. I have so many ways to word process that you might think I was David Progue or some other software reviewer. I'm loath to give up MS Word because so many of my manuscripts are in that format, but now these other programs are able to read and even convert MS Word files to their format or vice versa.

I've written in all of these programs and frankly after a while I don't even notice the difference. They are so much a like that, let's face it,word processing software is a commodity. And I think we can say the same for spreadsheet, contact management, web browsers, data base, and inexpensive photo manipulation programs.

Were they put the buttons and what they call them might vary, but the similarities are more obvious than the differences. I agree the inner activity between MS programs and the sameness of the layout can be comforting, but I find that most of the stuff I use that is not MS, works just fine. I also agree that certain "power users" might have legitimate reasons for preferring one package over another, but the vast majority of user are not in that league.

I've been tempted to buy a clean computer, one with nothing preloaded and use Linux as the operating system and free Office suite software, just to see if it had any downside, but alas there is so much software out there and so little time. The problem is if I really wanted to simplify my computing life I know the answer. Buy a Mac.