Money doesn't grow on trees

EVERYONE loves to get something for free. It's a universal bond that transcends language. Much has been made of late of the free alternatives to Microsoft Office. If you're a family with children, common sense says that it's better to get something for free. That means you have more money to spend elsewhere.

That argument may hold up if you're talking about spending the RRP on Amazon where the likes of Office Enterprise will cost you a heart-stopping £482.97 (as listed on 12.06.08).

However, it seems less persuasive when weighed up against the far smaller sum of £35.50 for the basic Office 2007 Standard package which we offer here at Software4Students. Being a Microsoft Partner means that we can offer huge educational discounts to children in education and their families (home use only), and £35.50 is less than the price of typical video game software on the Xbox 360 / PS3 / Wii.

So then, why would £35.50 be better than Free?

To answer that question you need to ask yourself how much value you're after. On price alone, free wins every time. Other issues though prevent price from being the deciding factor.

You don't need a degree in economics to know that people will always pay for convenience. Life is stressful enough, right? So when it comes to something we use every day like Outlook for email or Word for writing letters and documents, we don't want to have to think.

Don't make us think

We don't want to think about compatibility: "Why does this free doc not look exactly the same on a Mac as it did on my PC at school?"

Personally, I was a fan of free doc apps until they started wasting my time. I don't like printing documents only to discover that what I'm looking at on my screen isn't what the printer has produced - especially when Office 2007 does it right first time. It's not about being a fan of company x or y, it's about doing what I want, when I want, with mimimum effort on my part.

We don't want to think about security: "Why does this free doc application not get the same free online updates and security protection as Office 2007?" I like free weekly updates. It means my software is better than it was last week and I didn't have to do anything about it.

We don't want to think about missing features: "Why does this free doc application not have all the features I was used to with Office 2003, not to mention all the really clever stuff that features in Office 2007?"

Making an informed choice

Whether you're designing your CV, working on a school essay, exporting files for presentations or even updating your blog directly from Word, the cool features that you get from Office 2007 means that you need to think less to do more. You might be beginning to spot a trend here...

That saves us time which, in today's hectic world, is usually worth every penny.

------------------------------------------------------------
The Software4Students Team