Throwing Off the Shackles: How to Break Free of Microsoft

by Jerianne and Denny

While attending the Allied Media Conference in Bowling Green, Ohio, we overheard a conversation about Microsoft. The gist of the conversation was this: the conversers agreed that Microsoft was an evil corporation, but that it was an unavoidable evil, and there was no viable alternative.

It got us thinking: Within the zine and activist communities, many people hold anti-corporate philosophies — they protest against corporations, they refuse to shop at big chain stores, they refuse to buy certain corporate-label products. But how many of those people have a home or office computer running Windows (a Microsoft product), using Internet Explorer for web browsing and Outlook Express for email (ditto, ditto), or use Microsoft Word (ditto) to create their zines? Why are all these people continuing to support such an evil company — so monopolistic that people like those two at the AMC think there are no equal or better choices?

Alternatives do exist.

In this article, we’re going to tell you some of the ways you can free yourself from the shackles of Microsoft.

There are a multitude of reasons why you should move away from Microsoft, and as we talk about specific applications, we’ll delve into some of those. There is, however, one all-encompassing reason: Microsoft is a convicted monopolist whose business practices are bad for innovation and bad for consumers. Microsoft doesn’t just squeeze the competition — it grinds its would-be competitors into the ground. Lack of competition means lack of innovation, which hurts consumers twice: consumers don’t get the benefit of new technologies and software that could be developed and distributed if not for Microsoft’s heavy hand, and consumers pay higher prices for mediocre products. Let’s start with the easy stuff.

Email Address

When it comes to email, you’ve got two choices: paid and free. If it’s paid, you’re probably either using an email address from your website’s domain or from your Internet Service Provider. But for those of you with free email — who do you use for your email provider? If it’s Hotmail, you’re being a shill for Microsoft. You might as well walk around wearing a t-shirt that says "Microsoft Rules!" every day.

Contrary to its description, email is not truly free. Most "free" email is paid for by advertising — advertising you have to view to access your email, advertising that is attached to every email you send. So when you’re searching for a new email provider, take a moment to consider whom you are shacking up with. What does the company stand for? What kind of advertising will they subject you, and your email recipients, to? What exactly are you agreeing to, according to the provider’s Terms of Service?

It’s pretty easy to find several websites that list free email providers; some websites give comparisons and rankings. A good directory can be found here. Or just do a web search for “free email providers.”

We don’t really have any specific providers to recommend, although a couple of our friends use the site www.care2.com, which donates part of its revenues to nonprofit agencies that support the environment and healthy living.

Internet and Email

More than 90 percent of computer users worldwide use Internet Explorer as their default web browser. Outlook Express is likewise the most widely used mail client in the world.

That’s no surprise — IE and OE are integrated into the Windows operating system. But just because Microsoft is trying to force you to use these products doesn’t mean you should. Internet Explorer (or as we like to refer to it, Internet Exploiter) and Outlook have lousy security records. Both programs have had and continue to have terrible security holes, flaws that Microsoft is often slow to fix. For example, one security bug that cropped up in both IE and Konqueror (an open source web browser) was fixed in 95 minutes by the Konqueror team; Microsoft took more than a month to release a patch.

Nowadays even beginner computer users are aware of the plethora of viruses and worms that exist in cyberspace. Although the IE and OE’s integration into the Windows system may make things "easier" on the computer user, it makes for terrible security. Unless you are running anti-virus software on your computer, keeping the virus definitions up-to-date, and installing Windows patches as soon as they are released, it is easy for your computer to be infected by a virus-laden email that comes to your Outlook Express inbox. And most viruses are programmed to send themselves to every user in your Outlook address book. Studies have shown that unpatched Windows computers connected to the Internet are likely to be attacked or infected in 10-30 minutes.

Spyware and adware have become considerably more common of late. Spyware are programs that secretly monitor your actions, tracking data (even personal information) on your usage and relaying it to advertisers or other "interested parties." These programs can sometimes be installed without the user’s knowledge, can circumvent security settings on the user’s computer, or may be packaged with software that a user downloads. These programs exploit weaknesses in Internet Explorer. Another problem with Internet Explorer is that it is not standards compliant. Believe it or not, there are standards that govern HTML (the programming language used to compose websites). Standards are what make the Web accessible worldwide. Microsoft thwarts this by encouraging the use of proprietary elements in HTML, which means those websites don’t work well on other web browsers. In other words, Microsoft is using its power to shut out competition, which fails to ensure equal access for all web users.

The good news is that there are several alternatives, many of which are free.

We recommend Mozilla, Firefox, or Opera. Mozilla and Opera each come with a built-in mail client; Firefox is Mozilla’s standalone web browser.

Mozilla and Firefox are each available to download for free at www.mozilla.org. Mozilla was named the best web browser of 2003 by PC World Magazine. It also includes a webpage composer, a calendar application, and Internet chat software.

Mozilla is open source software. (Open source is software whose code is available for users to look at and modify.) This means it was developed by users — and is continually improved by people who actually listen to what users want and don’t want in an Internet browser.

Opera is not free. You can download a no-cost version from www.opera.com, but you’ll have to live with a permanent ad banner displayed in the toolbar. The ad-free version costs $29.

Other advantages to using Mozilla (or Firefox) and Opera: each has a built-in pop-up and script blocker. No more pop-up ads ever. Your homepage will never be hijacked. Each features tabbed browsing, which allows you to open multiple webpages in one window. (Have you ever used Excel? It works like that. Trust us, this is a feature you will love.) Each gives you more control and flexibility in handling cookies and passwords on a site-by-site basis than IE. Each has vast possibilities for configuration, allowing you to easily customize the interface. Opera allows you to save groups of pages into browsing sessions — handy for research.

Opera’s mail client is M2. Mozilla’s is Thunderbird. (Thunderbird comes packaged with Mozilla, but is also available as a standalone program.) Both have an integrated spam filter and a built-in news reader (for you diehard alt.zine folks out there). Both support multiple accounts, and both will allow you to import your email from Outlook Express folders. Best of all, they feature better virus protection than OE.

You can also get many of these benefits from Eudora mail, depending on which version you choose. Eudora has a "light mode" (free, but with fewer features), a "sponsored mode" (includes an ad window and advertising toolbar links; does not include Eudora’s SpamWatch, a junk mail filter), and a "paid mode" (with all the bells and whistles; costs $50).

You can find other choices with a simple Internet search.

Word Processing

Have you looked at the prices of Microsoft Office lately? Office 2003 Standard Edition (which includes Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint) costs $400. An upgrade from a previous version costs $240. Word alone costs $230, or $110 for the upgrade.

Are you fucking kidding me? We sure don’t have that kind of money to waste on software. (Think of all the stamps you could buy with $400!) We’re guessing you don’t either.

Which means that if you are using Office, there’s a good chance it is a bootleg copy — pirated software. On the surface, this may seem fine and well — you get the product without paying, so in a way you’re sticking it to The Man. But in the end, you’re just helping Microsoft in its quest for utter world dominance — legitimately or not, you are helping to increase its usage base.

Aside from the price, another way Microsoft likes to stick it to its users is with the End User License Agreement — you know, that box that pops up during installation with all the legal jargon, where you click "Accept" without reading?

The simple fact is that the EULA removes more rights from the consumer than it gives. When you "buy" software, you are in fact only licensing it for use — you do not own the software, and as such, you are quite restricted in how you can use it without violating the EULA. For example, you are allowed to install only one copy of Office on one machine. You can’t install different parts of the Office suite on different computers. The software can only change hands one time. Microsoft refuses to take responsibility for any damage resulting from the installation or use of its software. If you violate the license, Microsoft has the right to terminate your license.

Pirated software is punishable by civil penalties of up to $150,000, criminal penalties of up to $250,000, and up to five years in jail.

So what’s your alternative? OpenOffice.org.

OpenOffice is, again, open source software. It is free, as in costs nothing. It is designed to work on all operating systems. It includes equivalent programs to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, plus a drawing program. It comes with filters that enable you to use existing MS Office documents, meaning you can open Word documents in OpenOffice, then save them back in Word format, if you need to.

The OpenOffice suite gets high ratings. Says one reviewer at ZDNet: "OpenOffice.org is as simple to use as any other office suite and is as stable as any other — if not more so. Based on my own experience, I’ve had far fewer crashes and data loss with the OpenOffice.org suite than I’ve had with Microsoft Office, StarOffice, or Applixware. … If you can do it in Microsoft Office, you can do it in OpenOffice.org — for free."

If you’re the kind who likes to get your hands dirty, the OpenOffice licensing, like other open source software, allows the user to freely modify, extend, and improve the source code. Users then can share the improvements they have made with other users.

The suite is easy to download and install — just visit www.openoffice.org. If you prefer to install from CD, there is a list of worldwide distributors on the OpenOffice.org website.

There are, of course, other alternatives to MS Office — WordPerfect being the most well known — but most of these also cost big bucks and have similar usage restrictions to MS Office. More and more online word processing applications are popping up all the time — even Google has one now. Here’s a list of several others.

Even if you are not ready to make a clean break from Microsoft, we hope the examples we have given you here will enable you to take a few steps in the direction of freedom. For those of you who are ready to make a bigger change, consider switching to Linux, a free operating system that is both stable and versatile.

A Note to Macintosh Users

First of all, let us say: Good for you! Unless your Mac is cluttered with Microsoft applications. If that’s the case, you should read this article, too, even though we have written it to address PC users.

You, of course, already have an alternative web browser (Netscape or Safari), Apple Mail, and Appleworks. If that’s not enough, all of the programs we mention above are available for Mac OS X.

Not running on OS X yet? Opera may be your best bet for web browsing; for email you can also use Eudora. You can find a list of Mac friendly web browsers here. For Office-type programs, you might try ThinkFree Office (which costs $50); check it out.

Published in Zine World #21.