Over on his excellent blog, Tony Ballantyne recently explained why he’s dumping Microsoft Office, and I started to write a comment, but it became a bit too long, so now it’s here, down below this opening paragraph.

I’ve used Microsoft Office for years, for two main reasons: being an MS Office “expert” has been very handy to have on my CV for the kind of day job work I used to do; and it really was pretty damned good software, both in my old day job and in my writing and publishing life.

When I returned to full-time freelancing just over ten years ago, I stuck with MS Office because: I liked to keep that CV current, Just In Case; and it was still pretty damned good software.

Now, though… Let’s face it, I’m too old to be employable in a conventional job, so I’ve let the CV fall into neglect; being an MS Office expert counts for nothing, for me, now. The second reason, that pretty-damned-good-software thing, held up, though. But… But…

Now Microsoft are shoving “AI” down our throats, whether we want it or not (without banging on, I put AI in quotes because it’s not Artificial Intelligence, it’s a wholesale system for stealing the hard work of all kinds of creatives, throwing it into a black box, and extruding lowest-common-denominator garbage that kind of gets away with doing an approximation of the job real creativity does without any of the heart or originality or sensitivity – without humanity).

No, I don’t want CoPilot to tell me how to write a letter, or a review, or a story, or whatever. No, I don’t want MS, or anyone else, trawling unasked through my work to train its “AI” models to put me out of work (which AI is going to do anyway, because, sadly, a lot of the time extruded generic text based on approximations of a wanted writing style are far cheaper and just good enough to be used instead of anything with any real humanity). CoPilot, which can be removed or hidden, but they make it hard for you to be confident you’ve achieved this, is enough to make me think MS Office is no longer pretty damned good software, but now is just about good enough to still be used. Oh, the irony.

So last week I installed LibreOffice, and I’ve been trialling it with a few short stories and spreadsheets. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, perhaps, but it’s far better than the version I tried many years ago.

In fact, it’s pretty damned good, with the bonus that it’s not telling me how to do what I do “better”, or giving my work away behind my back. I still have MS Office installed, but I’ve made a note in my diary to cancel the annual subscription.

Yes, I’m sticking it to The Man, and it feels good!