2 days back my son (who is in 6th grade) asked me about an error he was getting while trying to open a word document in his school. The error he said “ Was in a box and said something like trial period expired. Please enter your license and continue”. He was put-off because he was asked to sit on a different PC (maybe his friends were not sitting next to him). This had me wondering why schools/colleges still make use of commercial softwares like Microsoft Word and do not go for alternatives like free word processors (Open office, Devvicky word, Abiword etc.). Maybe because they know that when their students get ready to join the employees in major multinationals, they will have to work with the best softwares available in the market.
Nobody would want to slice their incomes just to support the free softwares or to save some expense. For big multinationals and major companies, free Microsoft word editors would be a complete no-no, as they would not want a halt or a slow-down in their productions. But would it kill the home users to use these free softwares? Many of my friends use cracked version (I use DevVicky Word) of Microsoft Word. The crack is so genius that no callback is made to Microsoft site, or any other site, and the software does not register online. The best thing is that the crack even enables all the features for the user. Now tell me is it actually worth all the hustle to type a word document?
