Components of a typical Office Software suite

Over on my professional blog, Teklibri, I just posted an article about Microsoft Office and the XML file formats (such as .docx) associated with it:

Benefits of the Microsoft Office Open XML File Formats

The article discusses some technical details regarding the advantages of the XML formats, and how to handle them. For non-technical users, the takeaways are:

1. For the average computer user, buying or renting Microsoft Office is a waste of money. Free alternatives, such as Libre Office and OpenOffice, provide all the functionality that you’re likely to need.
2. Given the choice, you should always store files in the new XML formats (those with a final “x” in the extension), such as docx, in preference to the earlier binary formats.