Massachusetts Dropping Support for Microsoft Office

You have perhaps read some of the reports in various media outlets about how the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will be switching away from closed formats like MS-Word and Excel to more open formats like PDF and OASIS and may be wondering how the change will affect you personally and Saugus more generally. The quick answers are:

• It probably won't affect you too much as PDF viewers have been being pre-installed onto virtually every machine for the last decade or so anyway, and are freely available otherwise.

• It's not of immediate concern as it'll be a phased change between now and 2007.

• It won't affect most of the bigger Saugus web sites at all (as Saugus.net has been supporting open formats generally since 1998 when the Saugus By-Laws were first made available, and newer Saugus School sites like the TAHG project site are already building in support, too).

And of course if you're worried that you may not be able to open one of these more modern formats for some reason, there are ample free software options that will read such files without costing you a penny.