Microsoft Office vs. the other guys

A new report by research analyst, Forrester says that 80 percent of enterprise customers are using some version of Microsoft Office. This reflects the stranglehold Microsoft has on the office productivity market, despite increased awareness of alternatives such as Sun's OpenOffice.org suite, and the rise of web-hosted variants such as Google Docs.

Of course, there is room for improvement with Google Docs, as admitted by Dave Girouard, who is the president of Google's Enterprise unit. With the amount of money involved, you can be sure that challengers to Microsoft's dominance in this field will continue to push the boundaries of usability and features.  And with Microsoft working hard to create a web-based version of Microsoft Office, it would be foolhardy indeed to take the outcome of this race for granted.

Personally, I use Microsoft Word, Exel, PowerPoint and Outlook extensively in my daily work, which I have access to due to my academic work at a local polytechnic. I host my own email on an Exchange mail server, so I know I will go ahead and purchase Microsoft Outlook in a heartbeat even if I leave the institution. I must admit that I am not 100 percent certain if I would fork out my own money for Word and Excel, or if I would switch to an alternative instead.

What office productivity suite are you are using now, and is it your preferred choice? - Paul