The real problem is inertia.<p>'Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM', remember? It'll take a generation to get rid of the crap, but it will happen. The CIO at USC arranged a campus-wide rollout; more will follow. Once students (who then enter the workforce and, eventually, make decisions) decide that $free >> $discounted for Office, and things like a proper mail merge/track changes/export to Word are implemented, it's all over.<p>Things like Scribd and ever-improving ajax applications, along with hopefully forthcoming solutions to permit web browsers to exploit multicore 'puter power, should help a lot. It always blows me away when managers make excuses for paying (out of habit) for features that their workers do not use. Free is not always better, but all other things kept equal, free+no-local-maintenance is very good for a company.