Microsoft Office consists of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Depending upon the version of Microsoft Office you purchase, it also might include OneNote, Outlook, Microsoft Publisher, or Skype. First launched in 1988, Microsoft Office has become the de facto word processing and office management software standard of the computer industry. Softpedia reported (at http://goo.gl/bGu7Dl) that Office is used by more than a billion people worldwide. As popular as the Microsoft Office suite has become, it still is not “the best” office suite of programs for everyone. In fact, Microsoft Office has some very good competitors.

Perhaps the biggest threat to Microsoft’s dominance isn’t pricing, however. I find that Microsoft Office is rapidly becoming obsolete. 

Microsoft Office has added many new features over the years, but its primary use hasn’t changed much over the years. The computing world is changing rapidly, and yet Microsoft hasn’t kept up.

Since its introduction in 1988, Microsoft Office has become bloated as more and more features were added by various teams of programmers. It also has become slower, despite the fact that today’s computers are much, much faster than those of 36 years ago. Perhaps the biggest drawback, however, is the price. Unlike most other computer software, Microsoft Office remains as a very expensive product. The lowest-priced version, Microsoft Office Home & Student, sells for $99.99 on Amazon while Office Professional sells for much more with the price varying from one retailer to the next. If you shop around, you can find discounts from those prices; but the bottom-line price will still be much higher than any of several excellent alternative programs.

I used Microsoft Office for years and even paid for upgrades every time a new version was released. I eventually discovered free and open source software that did most of the same functions as Microsoft Office. The free programs have matured over the years and are now easy to install, easier to use than the Microsoft product, and generally faster in operation. My current favorite is LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/) although Apache OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) is also an excellent choice. Both are available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. 

That being said, I am now using the Windows and Macintosh versions of Microsoft Office alternatives less and less.

A few million people, myself included, have found that tablet computers provide much of the functionality of desktop and laptop computers, but they are far more convenient to use. These are excellent devices for reading and writing email messages, surfing the web, and reading ebooks, wherever you are. 

While prices vary, many of today’s tablet computers also cost much less than their desktop and laptop cousins. When tablet computers first appeared, they were low-powered devices with limited capabilities. However, that has changed over the years, and today’s $300 to $500 tablet computers perform many of the functions of much more expensive computers. Even better, the mobile tablet is easily carried most anywhere and is available whenever its owner wishes.

Office suites for mobile devices—such as tablets—have been available for several years although the early versions had limited functionality. They could display most Microsoft Word documents or perhaps even Excel documents, but they weren’t good at creating or editing such documents. They were useful primarily as file viewers.

The mobile office suites kept adding new features, however. Within a very few years, these programs became powerful—nearly as powerful as Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, or OpenOffice. For many people, a tablet computer with a mobile office suite can perform all the functions they need. The price of these mobile office suites? Always much cheaper than Microsoft Office. Some of the better ones are even available free of charge.

When someone now sends me an email message with an attached file, I can read the email message on a tablet computer or even on a “smartphone,” then tap on the attached file link, and the document appears on my screen. The result is a bit difficult to read on a tiny cell phone screen but works well on a tablet’s larger display. In fact, with today’s full-sized tablet computer, reading a document or spreadsheet on the tablet is as easy as reading the same thing on a desktop computer’s screen. It doesn’t take long to realize you have little use for the bulky desktop computer. Even the three to six-pound laptop that requires a long time to boot up is becoming less and less attractive.

A few years ago, tablets and cell phones could only be used to read documents. However, today’s office software allows the user to create new documents as well as to edit existing ones. With the addition of a keyboard, a one or two-pound tablet computer becomes a great tool for the (mobile) office. I take mine to libraries and archives to take notes and to transcribe documents as needed.

NOTE: The obvious big disadvantage to tablet computers are the on-screen “keyboards.” Some of them are difficult to type on. Luckily, a number of vendors sell Bluetooth keyboards that are as useful as keyboards found on laptops. I use an external keyboard that is the same size as my favorite tablet computer, and it easily slides into a carrying case that I purchased. The combination of tablet computer, keyboard, and carrying case easily slips into a briefcase, purse, or even an overcoat pocket. This combination has become my preferred “traveling computer.”

Based on the history of other Microsoft products, I suspect there are several things we can expect for the next version of Microsoft Office: the new software will be bloated, slow, and more difficult to use than competitive products. I will read the product announcement and early reviews closely to see if my guess is correct. I would love to try Office for iPad on someone else’s tablet. However, I doubt if I will ever purchase my own copy.

I haven’t tried all the available Office-compatible products for tablet computers and cell phones. However, of the several I did try, I prefer Liberoffice. It doesn’t do everything that Microsoft Office can do; but, in the few months I have been using Libreoffice, it has done everything I have needed. I have not yet seen a need to go back to Microsoft Office or any of its laptop or desktop competitors. Libreoffice can work with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. It reads and writes .DOC, .DOCX, and several other file formats.Libreoffice also includes a rather good spell checker and most other expected features. 

I also have installed Libreoffice on my cell phone. I find the tiny screen and lack of a real keyboard make it difficult to create new documents. I certainly would not want to write “the great American novel” on the cell phone! However, it works well for reading documents and for making (brief) edits.

Best of all, Libreoffice for Android and Apple’s iOS mobile computers is available free of charge. Google Docs will save files directly to Google Drive and can also save files via a two-step process to Dropbox and to most other cloud storage services. As a result, anything you create or edit in Google Docs is immediately available to your other computers as well as to anyone else you allow to share documents with you.

Google Docs was originally created by an independent company that was later acquired by Google. The new owners have improved the original product significantly, added new functionality, and integrated it with Google’s other products. All this was done without adding significant bloat or slowing down the original product.

There is no “pro” version or any other enticement to spend money. The free version of Google Docs. Libreoffice, and most of the other “clones” contains everything. 

It will be interesting to watch the upcoming battle between Microsoft Office and Google Docs. The history of computers has shown that power and capabilities keep expanding as the hardware keeps shrinking in size. Prices also keep dropping. In battles like these, consumers are the ones who benefit.

This article was written in Libreoffice on an iPad, using an external keyboard.