If you are still using software on your laptop or PC chances are that you are using Microsoft Word and/or all of the Microsoft Office programs, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. There is a slim chance that you are using Microsoft Office competitor open office, and/or Open Office Writer.

You may ask, as I did, which of these competitors has the better product performance wise. Bruce Byfield, journalist and writer, has just released his appraisal of Microsoft Word vs Open Office Writer, and it is quite a read to see which has better performance. Considering the OpenOffice suite is free of charge, I would tend to think about using OpenOffice before spending any money on Microsoft products.

There are other comparisons besides Byfield's. for example E-week's comparison of OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office.
I wrote about these two competitive products in May.

So what has changed? Both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office have new releases, and secondly, through use we know much more about both these products than before. I recommend that you should read carefully Bruce Byfield's assessment if you are thinking about using either Openoffice or MicrosoftOffice, particularly the wordprocessing programs in each of these two office products.