***Warning: Geek content below***

Yeserday I made a big decision, and ditched Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. I've been wanting to do it for ages, but you know how it is: MS products are very familiar, and you think there's no alternative.

These were the main things that had been stopping me:

1. Everyone expects you to send them files in .doc, .xls or .ppt format
2. My Palm syncs with Outlook
3. I love the Google toolbar

So imagine my surprise when I find that the Star Office suite, Mozilla Firefox browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client do everything I need, albeit with a bit of elementary tweaking and downloading. Admittedly to download emails to my Palm I have to take them directly off the server, but that's no real hardship.

These open source programs are also a lot less bloaty and more secure than the MS offerings, and according to all the reviews they don't do all those annoying things that the MS offerings do. Like Word. I've worked with four or five different versions of Word - and why, exactly, have they STILL not sorted out the formatting of bullet points properly? And don't you just hate it when it arbitrarily reformats everything to 18 point TNR bold?

Downloads are faster, too. With IE, I was downloading at about 60kbps. With Mozilla, it's over 100.

I'll let you know how I get on. But so far, don't think I'll be going back.

/geek