the ever-increasing irrelevance of microsoft

i absolutely see google docs taking over from microsoft office, it's just a matter of time. the only reason i can think of why anybody is still paying money for (or even going to the trouble of pirating) microsoft office, when a better, more convenient option is available for free.

speaking of which, it still boggles my mind that the only web browser that the library offers to its customers and staff is microsoft internet explorer, a notorious unstable and unsafe browser, when mozilla firefox, safari and google chrome have been available for free for years.

anyway, back to google docs, i bought a new computer in the past year, and it came with a trial version of microsoft office. i deleted it off my hard drive without even installing it, because for me it's become a completely useless waste of disk space. i originally download openoffice, a free, open-source alternative to microsoft office, and found it to be comparable in every way (quality, ease of use) to the proprietary software.

but the sheer convenience of google docs makes even openoffice obsolete. there is no need to download or install anything, and you don't need to carry around a USB stick to work on or print your documents on different computers. everything is saved and accessed online, the documents and the program itself.

i see this as the future of personal computers. the demand for hard disk storage space and physical storage media like cds and dvds is already rapidly decreasing as more and more media content becomes available online. as programs themselves become available online, computers will become little more than net portals. i only hope that copyright laws and information- and media-based industries will see this coming and adapt themselves accordingly, but i don't think it's likely.