Cost was a big factor - but I pointed out that Microsoft Office, divided over two or three years comes to $10 or more a month - and web applications are upgraded for free. One woman listed the software she used that could be replaced by online applications, and what she would pay was only slightly more than her upgrade cost for the software.
When I pointed out that many applications were free, they were skeptical - they wanted all the bells and whistles of the premium editions. But when I asked how often do they use advanced features, they all agreed - 99% of the time they just need the basics - word processing with basic formatting, spreadsheets with basic functions, etc.
I didn't learn anything I didn't already know - there is a large pool of people that use computers and default to the 'standard' software because that is what everyone else uses. All they need is the information presented to them in such a way that they don't feel like idiots for asking.
By the way, every person I talked to had broadband (cable or DSL) connections.
One service I would like to introduce you to is gOFFICE (www.goffice.com), a web office suite. gOFFICE offers great output, with dozens of custom document backgrounds and hundreds of sample letters for text suggestions. Check it out!
Posted by: Todd | September 20, 2006 6:50 PM | Permalink to Comment