> With OpenOffice 1.1 I have yet to meet a user in real life (I've > heard lots of accounts like your own on the net and I believe > you, but in business I gotta rely on the experiences of those > who pay me) who's unable to use it for basically everything for > which they used Word/Excel previously. So I'm going to go out > on a limb and say that number is a lot larger than 5% now, and > is growing with each release even if the market share's a lot > slower due to the primary marketing being word of mouth. I'm > surprised the low end PC makers aren't already preloading it in > lieu of MS Works or WP Office, but I bet they do sooner or > later. Our local white box mail order computer builder already ships Windows XP PC's with OpenOffice preloaded. It's a no-brainer for them, given the cost of an MS Office licence, which they can't put much mark-up on because the customer will go to the volume software retailer instead. They can't put much mark-up on XP either, so I expect the operating system market for the smaller independent builders will go the same way. I expect that in future Windows will be priced as an optional extra, which is only fair. I believe the Windows licence is the most expensive individual component of an entry-level PC. Cheers Daniel
