If you have to do a lot of writing for your job (and who doesn't these days?) chances are you spend a good portion of your life staring at Microsoft Office. MS Office is pretty much the gold-standard these days for word processors, though it carries with it a pretty hefty price tag. The cheapest version, Office Home & Student 2007, goes for $150 USD at most retailers, which is no small chunk of change to most households on a budget. As a result, an increasing number of users are looking to free Office alternatives. The current pack leader is OpenOffice, an open source office tools suite that aims to mimic the Microsoft offering and be as cross-compatible as possible. Other options are web-based services such as Google Docs.
Free is a big incentive, and can overcome lacking features and imperfect compatibility with the industry standard. Free is slowly starting to erode Microsoft's control of the market space. So, to keep competitive and in people's minds, Microsoft announced that the next version of their little-brother office productivity suite, Microsoft Works, will be free to download and use. The catch? There will be embedded advertisements.
Will this make Microsoft competitive in the free space, or will the fact that there are advertisements in the software drive away most users who would consider using it?