Open Office or Office 2007 for REALTORS

Microsoft released Office 2007 early this year. Many of our Real Estate customers have asked “Should I upgrade?”

My answer depends on a few variables.

The first variable is whether you are buying a new computer that has Vista on it and whether you are a serious Office user. Also I will ask you what version of Office you are currently using.

For the standard user who isn’t making fancy graphs or needs interoperability between other Microsoft programs I would most likely tell you not to upgrade since you probably wouldn’t use all the new features in the new version.

If you buying a new computer and you have a copy of Office 2003 then I would just install the copy of Office 2003 on your new computer.

Now if you have a Windows XP computer and everything is running fine and you still are not an Office power user then I would say stick with what works. Why spend more money on a new version if you are not going to use it much.

Overall I usually say don’t upgrade to almost anyone unless there is a specific feature that you really need. Even if you are using Office 2000 I usually won’t recommend upgrading unless there is a specific reason for it. Why spend the money if you don’t have to.

What if you are buying a new computer and need a copy of Office. You actually have a few choices on what to do at this point.

1. You? can buy Office 2007 Home & Student – $150.00 and Outlook 2007 – $100.00 This is a better deal than buying Office 2007 standard.
2. You can buy Office 2007 Home & Student – $150.00 and then get a free copy of Outlook 2007 from a Hosted Exchange provider.
3. Download for FREE Open Office and then if you want Outlook then get a free copy from a Hosted Exchange provider.

What is Open Office?

Open Office is FREE program that is just as good for any standard and probably power users of MS Office products. The two best things about this suite of programs is that it open/save-as all Microsoft documents and it’s FREE .

The one thing I cannot live with out is Microsoft Outlook. In my opinion it is the best email program because of it’s ability to sync with Microsoft Exchange. Nothing compares to this program.

One thing to point out about buying a retail copy of Office (any package) is that you can actually install it on up to 3 computers so your actual cost per computer is 1/3 the purchase price if you actually install it on 3 computers. Office isn’t really that expensive when you look at it that way.

For a more in depth comparison of Open Office and Microsoft Office read this article here? Open Office vs. Office 2007

For some reasons that may be good for some power users here is an article by Chad Johnson at My Tech Opinion

Of the 10 reasons Chad explains the only cool feature for me was the Save as PDF without having to buy Acrobat Standard or Pro .

Loren Nason
Future of Real Estate Technology