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Watch demos of Intel's webpad-based Health Guide for seniors, at the New York City launch of Intel's $250-million alliance with GE.

As the unholy offspring of Dr. Phil and Suze Orman might say, a costly relationship can make or break your fiscal health. As good stewards of budgetary dollars, IT professionals must always be re-evaluating service- and software-provider relationships. A business can't afford to be married to any one solution. Why, then, is Microsoft Office a sacred cow in many organizations?

From our perspective--both from speaking with organizations that have made the move and from having gone through sacred-cow change processes like this--it's not so much a question of whether organizations should use free office-suite software, but rather how much to use and when. When you consider the cost of the incumbent Microsoft software (a couple of hundred dollars per license) and multiply that by hundreds or thousands of licenses, it becomes clear it's not a matter of justifying the switch, but rather explaining the additional expense of keeping Microsoft Office around.

Think you know Microsoft from OpenOffice? TAKE A GUESS AT THESE OFFICE SUITE PROGRAMS WORD PROCESSING :: SPREADSHEETS :: CALENDARS :: E-MAIL :: PRESENTATION

Although you're likely to meet resistance from multiple corners when evaluating whether to leave Microsoft Office, if you do decide that the significant financial benefits of switching outweigh the reasons for sticking with Office, there are guideposts to follow to make the migration manageable (see "9 Steps to a Successful Open-Office Migration" in the image gallery).

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NWC REPORTS Office Alternatives Office-Suite Alternatives now offer comparable capabilities and can cut costs.	AROUND THE WEB Openoffice.org Major OpenOffice.org Deployments Microsoft Office Online StarOffice