No cat and mouse games here — I’ll cut to the chase. Here’s a tip for all my PC (and MAC) friends…
Grab a program called Open Office. See the link? Click it already! It’s FREE!
If you know me, you know that I’m a MAC girl. Still, the best contact management software for our type of business is PC platform only. So I end up with the computer where I do most of my work being one operating system — and another computer that runs on a different one. Yes, I know all about Parallels and Boot Camp…but I like my MAC just like it is. A MAC!
So I spend a huge amount of money for all the totally awesome programs for my MAC, and the PC gets the short end. For example, I didn’t mind spending the money for Microsoft Office Pro for the Mac, but didn’t want to cough up another $499 bucks just to duplicate that on the PC. So on the PC, I ended up using an older version of Office and found that if I opened one of the new .docx files and made changes, I had to save it as the older, .doc format. But not anymore!
Open Office is FREE. It doesn’t have all the really cool templates or bells and whistles — but if I want those, I’ll use my favorite computer with my favorite operating system. If you’re a home user, and don’t care about all the really high-end stuff anyway, it’s a pretty amazing solution. So here’s my suggestion — download the free Open Office platform, and put that $499 bucks into a jar. Keep dropping your quarters in there too and before you know it…you can buy a MAC — and in the meantime, you’ll have an office software suite that allows you to play with the big boys. (After you spend all your ‘jar money’ on a MAC, please note that there’s a version of Open Office for it too.)
Have a fabulous weekend — and let me know what you think about Open Office!