Never have I sat down and said 'I just want to play around with a spreadsheet for a couple of hours.' When I open PlanMaker, I have plans to make. Neither is an end in itself they are not meant to draw attention to themselves. In my opinion, an Office suite is a tool to get things done – much like an operating system. When Microsoft introduced ribbons with no option to switch back to menus, I stopped hoping that Microsoft Office would ever meet my needs. It always seemed too bloated for my needs and way too set in its ways – and instead of improving, that trend seemed to be getting worse. At the time, there was no Microsoft Office for Android, and the apps provided by Apple and Google seemed too limiting.Įvery couple of years, I took another look at Microsoft Office. It was love at first sight – especially once I realized it was available for multiple operating systems, including smartphones and tablets. As I was looking for something less cumbersome than OpenOffice, a colleague pointed me toward SoftMaker Office. With a heavy sigh, I moved onward to StarOffice, which later became OpenOffice (and eventually LibreOffice).

That's when I came across Lotus SmartSuite – shortly before it was gobbled up by IBM and left out to die by its new owner. Back then I was not in the habit of making regular backups, hence I had to reconstruct my work from an older printout.

After a rough start with WordStar and WordPerfect, I switched to Microsoft Word until one fateful night it ate my diploma thesis. Over the course of the past decades, I have probably gone through every Office suite available. I've been using SoftMaker products way before starting to write this blog.

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