At last week’s Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference in Palm Desert, Calif., a whopping 88% of 210 respondents to an electronic poll indicated they either hadn’t considered an alternative to Office or had done so only casually.

Office’s proprietary binary formats have often forced companies to stick with the suite so they can open documents from their external business partners. Standard XML, if widely adopted, would alter the situation that has led to vendor lock-in.

But in an e-mail poll of more than 50 corporate IT managers, a majority of respondents said they have no plans to use ODF — though they do have plans to use Microsoft’s Office Open XML, the default format in the new Office 2007 suite.

When asked which format she favors, an IT director at a major automaker replied, “In theory, ODF, but pragmatism will drive us to Office Open XML.”