The City Council approved $2.75 million today to purchase Microsoft Office 2007 licenses for several thousand city office computers. Currently the city uses Novell GroupWise for e-mail and calendar software, and different departments have computers operating on at least four different Microsoft Office versions. City Council Energy and Technology Committee members couldn’t help but chuckle at the ridiculous complexity of Seattle’s municipal government software woes at its April 2 meeting. The migration process is so complicated – and the city perhaps so inefficient – that it will take until 2009-2010 to make the switch for roughly 10,287 users – not to mention a total cost of around $4.9 million to fully accomplish the transfer. Council President Richard Conlin’s key question: What happens when Steve Ballmer and Co. release Microsoft Office 2011?