Software update

The Philippine government announced a month before its plan to field anti-software piracy agents starting September 19 this year, and it did. So, no more pirated software for me. Now I’m learning to use OpenOffice 2, an ‘office suite’ which I downloaded free from the Internet and which is an unabashed ‘translation’ of Microsoft Office. As a writer, editor and desktop publisher, I have been using Word since 1987, and I have grown to like it even as I have struggled to master it on my own, no experts asked.

Now I have to learn a different language: Why don’t I simply buy legal copies of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and go on with my life as Editor of the Philippine Journal of Crop Science? I won’t do that because I’m thinking like this: Windows and Office will cost me P17,000, and that’s (almost) the cost of a good Pentium 4 desktop computer complete with the CPU assembly, monitor, mouse, keyboard, a twin-speaker system, and a CDROM drive. I can’t get over the thought that I have to pay for the software (it’s only 2 CDs) almost as much as I have to pay for the hardware. I can’t get over the thought that software is overpriced – well, it merely reflects the fact that we overprice intellectual work while we underprice manual labor.