For the last few months, I’ve been using my 2014 Asus Zenbook UA303UA laptop for writing projects.
This month, I switched from Google Chrome OS Flex to Zorin OS (Linux) and I couldn’t be more delighted.
Continue reading Moving from Chrome OS Flex to Zorin OS on my Asus Zenbook UX303UA
I’ve been taking a hard look at the software I rely on day to day.
It’s partly because the current US political landscape feels increasingly unstable. But it’s also because so much of our default productivity and creative toolkit is dominated by a small set of mega-vendors, again, mostly American.
A quick scan of my own habits makes the pattern obvious: Microsoft Windows, Google, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Acrobat, Oracle MySQL. Not all of these are bad per se, and plenty of people have good reasons to keep using them. But when a handful of companies become unavoidable, we all pay for it in lock-in, pricing power and reduced choice.
The risk isn’t just cost; it’s dependency.
If your operating system, office suite, cloud platform, email stack and creative tools all sit inside one country’s corporate orbit, your options narrow fast when politics shifts, policies change, licensing tightens or data rules get complicated.
Continue reading Why I’m reviewing my software stack
Microsoft has increased the price of its Microsoft 365 Family subscription again, which has nudged me to rethink whether I still need it.
I am keen to explore alternatives that feel lighter, more accessible and less tied to the bigger companies like Microsoft, Adobe and Corel.
So I have started testing OnlyOffice – a free, cross-platform suite that immediately surprised me with its clean design, generous scaling options and effortless compatibility with my existing documents.
This is the start of a tentative experiment to see whether it could replace Microsoft 365 for me.
Continue reading Trying OnlyOffice after years with Microsoft