I'm not a fan of guns at all, and I am a believer in reality. What chance do you think you would have against a corrupt US government with your stupid AK-47? Even if you get a thousand of your hick friends together and you all have AKs, and y'all think the south is gonna rise again, what do you think you're gonna do when the F-22s come for you? Go ask the Syrian rebels how well that's working out for them against a government that's only a tiny fraction as sophisticated and powerful as ours.

The only thing an AK-47 is good for is shooting up movie theatres and giving dumb country boys an expensive, false sense of security. I live in the south and I have to listen to that line of reasoning all the time, always with a touch of that good 'ole confederate spirit.

Can we please drop this line of reasoning? It's a dead end. Literally.

• From a fresh reboot: SoftMaker Office, 12 seconds; Open Office, 9 seconds.
• From cache (opened again after closing): SoftMaker Office, 6 seconds; Open Office, 3 seconds

Compatibility with Microsoft Office 2007:

• Powerpoint 2007 .pptx files (I used some sample shapes and text with some of the new shape effects): SoftMaker Presentations would not even open at all; OpenOffice.org Presentation opened the file, loaded the text and shapes of my test file, but failed to load some special shape effects like the halo.
• Word 2007 .docx files (I used some sample text with a funky font, a table with some formatted borders, a graph, a diagram, and a shape): SoftMaker TextMaker failed to load the font correctly, improperly formatted the table, failed to load the graph, failed to load the diagram, and loaded the shape fine; OpenOffice.org Word Processor failed to load the font correctly, imported the table perfect, failed to load the graph, failed to load the diagram, and loaded the shape fine.
• Excel 2007 .xlsx files (I created a column with conditional formatting, a column with a colored background, and a column with a border around it): SoftMaker PlanMaker failed to load the conditional formatting, but showed the column data. Failed to load the column with the colored background entirely, showing none of the data. Failed to load the border around the last column. Open office failed to load the conditional formatting, but showed the column data. Loaded the column with colored background perfectly. Loaded the column border perfectly.

Conclusions:

OpenOffice.org is faster, more compatible with Office 2007, blends in well with my native theme, and is Free. SoftMaker is slow, not as compatible as OO.o, uses it's own theme and widgets, and is 70 Euros.