The docx is coming! The docx is coming!

Fear the docx.  It's from Microsoft.  It's new.  And it means you harm.

Docx is Microsoft's attempt to dominate the word processor market once again.  OpenOffice.org has been turning heads as a new, free, compatible alternative to Microsoft Office.  There's also Google Docs which is likewise a contender.  Microsoft's answer: Office 2007 uses a new document format which claims to be open but is not open at all.  Still, they were able to do enough of a sell job to convince the W3C, so that Microsoft's "open" format will supposedly become the new industry standard.  The bad news: it's not compatible with anything other than MS Office 2007.  (And I've already ranted at sufficient length about how much I hate Office 2007.)

So when a business contact sent me a sign up form in the new format, my computer (running Microsoft Office 2003) was unable to open it.  And since the IT guy isn't in today, he can't install the converter for me.

The solution: Linux (again!).  Novell has released a plugin for OpenOffice that lets it read Office 2007 documents, something even Office 2003 can't do.  Of course, it's a little tricky to install, but really not that bad.  And it's a lot better than asking your sales contact to resend the file.

Working with .docx files in PCLinuxOS