MS Office Excel Still Wins :(

One of the things I have been telling my students (especially the most clueless ones about computers) is that there is software out there that they don't have to pay for. In fact, there is such a massive, continuous supply of freeware, shareware, open source awesomeware, that one never needs to buy software... unless it's for k-12 schools. :(

The software suite I am talking about is MS Office. Nothing really major wrong with it - it's definitely a useful set of programs - but there are a number of things that I can point out that need to be removed, fixing or enhancements. (Formulas, for instance. I don't give a @#$%ing crap about MathType. Stop asking, dialog box!)

On the other hand, the free alternative, Open Office, offers the same functionality for 100% less money. That is, maybe you might have to pay for the electricity and internet connection to download it, but it's freeeeeeee.

However wealthy a person may be, the moment someone says "FREE", anyone and everyone with half a brain would jump on the chance to try it out. Hence, I have been recommending to the masses to use OOo (OpenOffice.org) when their trial software has expired, to avoid going through the "Miss, I couldn't write my essay because Word just expired" crap.

Too bad I discovered today that OOo has one big, huge, black mark on its awesomeness. I can't believe that after 5 years of so many people asking for chart and regression options such as giving the equation of the regression line, and no one has made it yet.

I especially find the second to last comment stupid, about how he believes that because it is open source means everyone is at fault. (We're soooo sorry that we don't know squat about coding. We're soooo sorry that we want to use this program in schools and my students don't know what the crap is going on, let alone how to get a stupid regression line to show up. And on top of that, we're soooo sorry we like your program and want to make suggestions, while nobody asks how this should be done.)