inputs/outputs

It’s almost the fall, which for most of my friends means school again. Everyone has loaded up on new laptops, moved into their new pad, accessed their neighbor’s wireless, and has discovered that they haven’t bought the new version of Office, and can’t find their old discs to install a previous version.

I’ve been a “professional” consultant for a little more than a month now, but I’ve always played the role of tech consultant for my friends and relatives. My sister, who bought a MacBook, and my good friend Billy, both were in need of Office, and asked me if I knew where to grab a copy.

Now, legal issues aside, I didn’t know of a way for them to get a free copy of Office. But it wasn’t Word, Excel, and Powerpoint that they really needed. It was a word processor, a spreadsheet creator, and a slideshow app that they were really in search of. They just didn’t know it. It’s just like a scenario where someone in search of band-aids for a bleeding child, and is told by the store manager that, no, the store does not sell band-aids, but they do have adhesive bandages with a gauze strip.

And with the magic of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), all of those things are not only free, but they don’t require any downloading. And not only are they web accessible, but there aren’t many compatibility issues (so you can open your boss’ word documents in Google Docs, for instance). Additionally, you can save those documents to your google account (or wherever) and access them on any computer that has an internet connection.

Is it a good substitute for someone who doesn’t want to dish out a few hundred for the office suite? Yes. Because you can save your documents to your hard drive for backup, and there are free office application suites (like NeoOffice) that will open/edit your documents when you aren’t wired to the web.

That being said, my friends will end up dishing out the cash to feel comfortable with the software they’ve been using forever, even if these new-wave web 2.0 apps don’t have too many compatibility issues. And yet, many of them were so willing to switch over and learn OS X, simply because having the user experience was worth more than sticking with the norm.

The norm’s changes everyday, anyway, depending on what users are trying to accomplish. Adaptability is a skill that will save you time and money.