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The news that Novell has released an Office Open XML (OOXML) translator for OpenOffice.org is yet another nail in the coffin of the office productivity franchise known as Microsoft Office. However, if the open source crowd is really serious about denting Microsoft’s dominance in this space, what is needed is a little Evolution.

With the translator, Microsoft cannot hold customers captive to Office 2007. OpenOffice.org users don’t have to worry about receiving a Microsoft Word (and hopefully soon Excel and Powerpoint) file they can’t read. Now the onus is on Microsoft to update Office 2007 to include open document format (ODF) capability, which OpenOffice.org already has and is being increasingly recognized as a global standard.

Looking at OpenOffice.org as a dispassionate business user who has just downloaded the free software for a new Windows notebook rather than buy a copy of Office 2007, I am quite happy with my new office suite - except for one thing. This otherwise excellent package does not provide an equivalent open source desktop email and calendaring client to Microsoft’s Outlook. This is a shame because I use Outlook at least as much as Word.

I can almost hear the Linux crowd jumping up and down screaming: “Move over to Linux and you can have it all - OpenOffice.org plus the Linux-based equivalent to Outlook, Evolution.” My answer is yes Evolution is what I want - but I want it on Windows.

The problem is that the year of the Linux desktop has still not arrived. Perhaps vendors like Dell and IBM should and will help bring it on sooner rather than later. Then we can all buy Linux pre-loaded on our desktops and notebooks that will just work with our wireless networks and peripherals when we turn it on without having to do any major configuring.

Until that day arrives, however, like most consumers I would prefer to buy a Windows or Mac computer, turn it on and start working.

I can also hear the online devotees murmuring in the background about Google Apps and Yahoo Calendar, both very good products to be sure. They may well be the future, but right now most users want full-featured desktop office productivity tools with local storage that they can use offline.

It is true that you can choose to use a basic mail client like Thunderbird or Microsoft’s Outlook Express and an online calendaring tool but a solution like that for business users does not have the integrated feel of a product like Outlook or Evolution.

So, given that most users will not make the transition to a Linux desktop anytime soon, would it not be a worthwhile cause for the open source crowd to make a version of Evolution or something like it available for the Windows desktop? Or do they want business users to continue to buy Microsoft Office just because they need a decent integrated email and calendaring client?

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