I have a great cost-saving idea for West Virginia’s public and higher education systems, as well as state government, but please don’t share my great idea with those nice people at the Gates Foundation.

Stop using the Microsoft Office Suite of products and begin using OpenOffice.  Microsoft may provide great education discounts, but OpenOffice is open-source and free and, more importantly, just as good, if not better.  OpenOffice offers complements to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, as well as some other programs, in a single package, and it can convert files to other formats quite easily.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was responsible for a state technology agency for five years and didn’t know about OpenOffice.  I’m making up for lost time.