The assumption underlying this whole article is that you don't "need" Office to do work. That somehow iStuff will fill in your missing productivity suite. This just isn't backed by reality.

In an office setting (I'm not saying enterprise, as that would be asking too much), you make use of a word processor, a spreadsheet, maybe an email client, maybe a presentation thing.

Is there honestly any real competition in that field from tablets and iStuff and the like? No. Those are content-consumption devices, occasionally branching out into cutesy creation. There's nothing wrong with that, mind you, but work is done on a desktop, where you need to do a lot of typing and clicking. The interface is simply better for that.

Moreover, Microsoft Office has pretty much nailed its niche: I challenge you to find a better office suite. Here's what you'll have to do:

1. Find me an office suite that works out-of-the-box.

2. Find me an office suite that does everything (email, database (Access lol), word processing, spreadsheet, simple programming, presentations) for a flat fee.

3. Find me an office suite that does (2) fairly well.

4. Find me an office suite that does (2) that interops basically seamlessly across other businesses and old versions of my own business.

There's some nifty stuff on the net as thin clients running in HTML5. There's some cool stuff happening in tablets. But the author is sorely mistaken in presuming that the world has somehow moved past Office.

EDIT: And yes, I've tried Google Docs and OpenOffice and WordPerfect and all these things--but for raw "get the bidness done" Office is pretty much it.

EDIT2: And Word's spellchecker could've saved me. >:(