OpenOffice.org 2.4, the latest version of the free productivity application suite, was released today and is now available for download for a number of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

An open source project backed by Sun Microsystems, OpenOffice.org is widely regarded as the leading competitor to Microsoft Office. It is also the most prominent software to support Open Document Format (ODF), a set of open standards that challenges Microsoft's proprietary Office file formats.

Much has been said about the evils of vendor lock-in. The reality is that there are definite advantages to being a "Windows shop," particularly in terms of manageability and unified IT support. We like the idea of introducing Linux or Mac OS X into our companies, but it isn't always so easy in practice.

That's beginning to change, however, thanks in part to the efforts of Likewise Software. Likewise Open Spring '08, released today, is the latest version of a product that allows Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unix systems to authenticate against Microsoft Active Directory servers. This makes it possible for network administrators to manage Unix systems the same way they do Windows clients. And the best part is that the software is free.

Browsers were all the buzz over the weekend, beginning with the news that the developers of Mozilla Firefox feel their latest build is ready for widespread general use, despite technically being still only a beta. I'm not ready to make the leap full-time yet myself, but I'll definitely be looking at Firefox's new features in the coming weeks.

Firefox has long been my browser of choice; and judging from my own, completely unscientific study, I'm not alone. Access logs for my own sites show some 33 percent of visitors now use the open source browser -- an impressive market share for any software.

Apologies to J. Jonah Jameson -- I doubt the esteemed publisher of the Daily Bugle ever even used a PC -- but I couldn't resist cribbing one of his more famous headlines. Ol' Jonah always had a bad habit of selling short your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, no matter how much good the webslinger did. Similarly, the long-awaited release of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista seems to have done little to quiet the grumbling about Microsoft's latest OS.

Popular wisdom says you should wait for SP1 before switching to any new version of Windows. Ironically, the question on the minds of current Vista customers is whether it's the right time to switch to SP1.

Every business has data that needs protecting. You don't have to be a MasterCard, with tens of millions of financial records at risk, to worry about data security. Whether it's your customer lists or your corporate credit card accounts, you have some information that shouldn't get into the hands of the bad guys.

Encryption is one way to plug those leaks, but the problem with most data encryption software is that it doesn't get used. Conventional wisdom says that anything that adds extra hassle to the workday is bound to be neglected by end users.

What better way to kick off a blog about business software than to talk one of the most significant business productivity applications out there? Sometimes it seems like we writers spend entire days inside our word processors. But for the majority of you, I'm betting you might as well be married to Microsoft Excel.

A good spreadsheet is a powerful tool, but like anything, you can overdo it. It's like the old carpenter's adage: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. In my time as an IT manager, I saw employees trying to use Excel for everything from storing complex databases to typing up entire reports, complete with fancy formatting. Often they would claim it was easier for them to shoehorn an inappropriate task into Excel than to learn a new program for the job.

Where would your business be without software?

In an earlier era, you might have said that your most important business tool was your warehouse, or your fleet of vehicles, or even your phone system. Today, there's scarcely any facet of any business -- from accounting, to shipping and receiving, to communications, to manufacturing -- that isn't touched in some way by IT. And that means software.