I've commented as much before but what do people even use office for these days? Like I hear individuals complain about the prices and I'm just like I have not needed a real office suite in years. Google Docs has been enough to get by with for free for well over a decade.
Are you... creating and printing documents? Why? I haven't had a real need for a word processor since email was invented.
While I sometimes hangout with non-Engineering folks, I see following activities:
- preparing various letters, reports, audits, notices, terms/contracts etc. by modifying or using very specific templates and Office tools are very well entrenched for fixed templates
- Financial reports, analysis on excel(yes, most professionals are trained and feel comfortable there, same as how we feel good in terminal/console), building specific forms with constraints and checks, data sharing, special report of field data collection and audits, technical specifications/spec-sheets, quick complex calculations, think MS Excel as best candidate which everyone and there pet dog learned since elementary school
- Presentation, brochures, special fliers, quick reports, course reference/speech deck, lecture slides, product marketing/sales docs are mostly being handled by PowerPoint
Of course, we have numerous best-alternatives which can all replace these or “why not google docs”, but these people are trained on these specific ms office tools since dawn of civilization when people stopped cave painting and stone tablet based accounting in favor of computers. While we tech folks love to pickup and learn new tools, the other 99.99999% people see diminishing return adapting new tools. And lets be real, who wants to mess with the official template in some new tool that purchasing and procurement will not ever care about and scold the applicant back into the MS Office tools that already comes pre installed and licensed from their IT vendor?
Google docs are fine for anything non-private and stuff that can go to the cloud.
I usually use Google docs for stuff like language learning for convenience and libreoffice for financial spreadsheets, work related stuff, and anything I don't want to be snooped by Google systems.
Kids' school "teaches" it, meaning the kids have to memorize where to click to do X in various Microsoft products. So you're stuck with Microsoft if you want decent grades for your child.
For some government and commercial interactions, printing things out is the only way to get something done