Are you going to pay for that?

If you spend your days in front of a computer, chances are you’ve had more than the occasional run in with Microsoft Word, Excel or any of their Office cousins. Microsoft Office, the most prolific and popular suite of general business and student software, retails for about $100. That might not sound too bad, until you realize it’s for a student or standard edition of the software with Microsoft’s current promotion. When Office 2007 first showed itself on retail shelves, it ran anywhere from $250-$600, depending on the package. The question you should be asking yourself is: do I really need Microsoft Office?

Furthermore, individuals and small business owners should be considering if the features and support Office offers are a value-add for them, or if cheaper alternatives might suffice. There is no sense in not try to save a buck, after all.

The largest opponent to the suite that Bill built is without question Sun Microsystem’s OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice, at its core, offers a hauntingly similar set of features and software to Office. Sun’s office suite is impressive in that it works almost seamlessly with Office files and formats without much trouble, while also using open-source file structures of its own. It is also a fraction of the size of Microsoft Office, is Linux friendly, produces smaller files, and has notably cleaner HTML output. Did we mention it was free?

This is not to say that Office is simply a meritless bloated product. There are, in fact, advantages to shelling out your money for this name brand software. Word offers things like Smart Tags, highly flexible outlining, smart table formatting and more robust grammar and spelling checks. OpenOffice’s Writer doesn’t boast these things as well as some other particular functionality. Office also supports macros, where OpenOffice does not.

When all is said and done, Office is also a slightly more high-end feeling piece of software. As it should be, for the cost, and considering that it is developed by a huge team of paid programmers. However, OpenOffice is a community-built piece of software; developed by those who use it. Of course, if you are a Mac user or the operator of a Mac-based office, the iWork suite is also a comparable solution with amazing ease of use. Plus, it only runs you $79 per license.

Now before you run out and tell the IT guy to deactivate all of your Office licenses, realize that the options don’t end with OpenOffice.org. There are a range of options out there that won’t cost you a dime. Google, for example, offers Google Docs with any Google account. The entire application collection is web-based and doesn’t require so much as a download. Clearly, the Google offering is much simpler than both Office and OpenOffice, and for core typing, formatting and spreadsheet usage it gets the job done. Google also offers unparalleled accessibility and sharing options by virtue of its web-based nature and cooperation with all of Google’s other offerings.

Even in the web-based productivity software world, Google isn’t alone with solid free offerings. Companies like Zoho, ThinkFree and Etherpad all have solid products that would serve a user adequately for tasks such as … well, writing a blog post like this one.

While Microsoft probably isn’t in danger of seeing Office loose all popularity, it is also pretty safe to say that it isn’t the standard that it used to be. New and old companies out there are giving consumers more options than ever before.