Despite all of the buzz about “cloud computer” Microsoft Office still dominates the realm of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation graphics — the standard office suite. Forget for a moment “how” Microsoft became dominant and ask yourself this question: How do they continue to dominant this area of computing?

Do they dominant because of the features?

Does the power trio of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint completely outshine all of their competitors in features and functionality? I doubt it. Matter of fact, only the basics features are used by the majority of Office users. And since the basics features are easily, and often, duplicated, it’s not Microsoft’s stunning array of features that keep them on top.

Do they dominant by sheer force?

Does Office dominate because Microsoft is such a software powerhouse (a.k.a the 800 pound gorilla)? No doubt Microsoft’s industry presence has a lot to do with the dominance of Office; however, unlike Internet Explorer, Microsoft doesn’t give away Office so dominance isn’t a side effect of computer sales.

The answer? Once you start, it’s hard to stop

The key to Office’s dominance of the desktop is its proprietary format of .doc (Word), .xls (Excel), and .ppt (PowerPoint). Once you start to amass a pile of documents saved in any of these formats, you’re bound to use a product capable of reading and editing those formats. You could open and save your documents in a more commonly accepted format; however, if you have a lot of documents in any of these formats, the migration project can be a daunting task. Let’s face it, once you start using Microsoft Office, the proprietary document format keeps you captive.

Break the chains that bind you

If you find yourself a prisoner of Microsoft Office, there is hope. Alternative office suites do exist and some of them do an excellent job of reading and writing the proprietary Office document formats. On Wednesday I’ll take a quick look at these alternatives and offer a few quick tips to make a migration to one of these options a painless one.

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