> Owning software is much less important to me than keeping my creative works safe.
I've lost so much time to MS Word version incompatibility issues, that I've stopped using it almost completely back in 1999. I've had to use Word occasionally at work, and had met some 2003<->2007 incompatibility issues as well.
If you care about keeping your creative works safe, then relying on any software you can't reinstall at will -- even if it is 10 years from now -- is the wrong answer. Seems like MS office falls under that "wrong answer" definition.
.txt, .html or latex files are the way to go. You'll be able to read them until the sun goes out (although perhaps the "blink" attribute won't be supported)
I've lost so much time to MS Word version incompatibility issues, that I've stopped using it almost completely back in 1999. I've had to use Word occasionally at work, and had met some 2003<->2007 incompatibility issues as well.
If you care about keeping your creative works safe, then relying on any software you can't reinstall at will -- even if it is 10 years from now -- is the wrong answer. Seems like MS office falls under that "wrong answer" definition.
.txt, .html or latex files are the way to go. You'll be able to read them until the sun goes out (although perhaps the "blink" attribute won't be supported)