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Microsoft Postpones Office XP Subscriptions
shroom writes: "Microsoft has dropped the Office XP subscription plan, at least for the near future. Wonder if this means they were getting too much heat from IT managers, or if they have something else up their sleeve."
MS reps drop by in their Beemers and C class wheels, and the average middle manager drools. "Wow, these guys are successful, if I buy their stuff, I can be successful, too."
The American business model revolves around making Bill Gates the first trillionaire. Trust me bunky, XP subscription is the next killer app.
MS will deploy their female field reps to contact the yuppie female managers. Not wanting to hurt women's chances in the workplace and to steer business to the sisters, the contracts will be signed first, then read. Trust me on this, too.
XP will be given to female office workers. They'll spawn all sorts of incompatible files, and the men will never criticize the women for bringing in a new version without management authorization, that would be a hate crime. The men will just kill the budgets and buy their upgrades.
XP is gonna be a big money maker.
As stated above, I have Win2k and IE 6 preview without the key. And after actually READING the Tech Report article and the comments on the article, you quickly learn that the key comes from Terminal Services and can be set on any MS OS. To quote an anonymous poster:
"More than likely what has occured is that the system in question (the one that these keys appeared on) has connected to a Windows 2000 Server via MS Terminal Services or Citrix ICA. That will result in these keys appearing in the registry of any Win32 client OS (2000 Pro, NT4 WKS, 98*, 95*). "
Öhh...what?!? My unmoderated comment above has been rated as "overrated". People on Slashdot will never cease to amaze me in how stupid and narrowminded you can get.
Oh...so the documentation at http://www.openoffice.org/FAQs/build_faq.html is just plain wrong. So, I'm supposed to assume the docs are wrong and keep searching to find something that contradicts the documentation.
Yeah...sounds like something I wanna use instead of Office.
According to the Build fact, it does not run on 95/98, just NT, which would in no way make it a competitor to MS Office.
Actually sharing files between Office 97 and 2000 (other than Access files, which have completely changed) works surprisingly well. This is because most of Microsoft's big customers threatened to switch to another Office suite after the 95 to 97 debacle. That is why nearly 60% of Microsoft's Office customers are still using pre-2000 versions of MS Office.
Microsoft knows that their biggest Office suite competitor isn't Corel, or Sun, it's old versions of their software. If the entire world decided to skip upgrading to Office XP Microsoft would go under just as quickly as if we all switched to Linux. So Microsoft is stuck with the unenviable job of trying to sell the new features of their newest Office Suite during an economic downturn. Even worse, hardly anyone can tell you what the new "features" of this product actually are.
This is precisely why Microsoft wants to get their customers on a subscription model. It would give them a stable income, it would increase the amount of money paid (over the long run) by their customers, and it would completely remove past versions of their old software from the competition. After all, when your Microsoft bill will be the same whether you upgrade or not, you might as well upgrade.
However, Microsoft faces several challenges in their quest to become the software version of the telephone company. The biggest challenge is that over half of their users are perfectly happy with their current (paid for) software. Consumers are also changing the way that they buy PCs. Nowadays consumers are much more likely to spend less than $1000 on a PC than over $2000. The price of the OS and Office license becomes far more noticeable when the margins on the hardware are cut in half. Last but not least Microsoft is starting to have some actual competition. Linux (and more importantly Open Office) are starting to be pretty useful pieces of software, and they are available at a much lower price. Emachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more competitive other OEMs will almost certainly follow.
But this hardware could come with software. Specifically it could come with Star Office, which is not nearly as bad as you think. It is a ton better than Microsoft Works, for example. In fact, for most people it is pretty much a drop in replacement for MS Office. It starts a little slower, and it needs a little more hardware to be responsive, but for the hardware OEMs this is actually a good thing. The eMachines already come with Star Office, and as the hardware market continues to become more and more competitive other OEMs will likewise begin bundling Star Office. The fact that Star Office runs on Windows makes it an easy piece of software for the OEMs to bundle.
Believe me, there are plenty of people that find both Linux and Star Office useful, and it isn't the best software that wins out in the end. The software that wins out in the end is the software that is "good enough" at the lowest price. For years people got by with clunky DOS based PCs despite the fact that Macintoshes were tons easier to use, and had niftier software. Apple learned the hard way that most people would rather learn to edit weird text files than pay a couple hundred dollar premium for a computer. Star Office may not be suitable for your needs, but not everyone needs a $500 Office suite.
It will be interesting to see what wacky scheme Microsoft comes up with next to regain their double digit growth.
It's really cool that you are such a wise, all knowing expert and can critique Microsoft from such an incredibly informed point of view.
But I'm just curious why you are claiming Win2k has a 2 Gig memory limit?
Just wondering, because... well that's wrong. It's actually a 4 Gig limit. But if that little factoid is wrong, how am I to view your other opinions?
I mean, are you truly informed, or do you just have some knee jerk reactionary attitude that all things Microsoft suck?
think Excel 2000 file format was compatible with Excel 97.
Access 2000 was definately not compatible with Access 97, however.
Not sure about Powerpoint.
I am sure Microsoft is deeply sorry that they have disappointed you.
The fact is they probably dropped this for right now because of slowing economic strains. In order to implement this they'd have to take a hit to their short term financial growth in favor of a long term sustainable model. I suspect they are afraid of what would happen to their stock value if they announced next quarter a 20% reduction in earnings.
As far as Samba. It's really not a threat, and never has been. It's a nice solution if you already have some Unix machines in place and need to serve to Microsoft clients.
But even with the improvements, it's still a nightmare to support.
The Register is like the National Enquirer of the computer world. It's interesting and fun to read, but you shouldn't rely on it for accurate news.
If your really paranoid go into regedit and search for the word 'License'.
I didn't realize Samba was psychic. This must be a new feature just added recently?
The last time I used it, it was still quite a pain in the ass(at least compared to Win2k) to setup new file shares, new print queues, new users, setting/changing passwords, etc.
True true.
Actually I don't buy the cost of software compared to the cost of hardware argument. Perhaps if you are talking bundling, but hardly any PC's at less than $1000 come with bundled software of any consequence.
I do think that Microsoft is going to have to lower their charges for Office in order to convince people to do the upgrade. As a boss of mine once said "it's better to have a handful of nickels than no quarters"
But like you said, the real threat to Microsoft is their old versions. It's certainly not Linux which is hardly what I would call useful, neither is StarOffice.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Consider the business model of your local laundromat.
Yes, you are right -- it is similar to XP in many ways:
1) The machines at the laundromat are overpriced.
2) The machines sometimes chew up the things you put into them, as they are poorly maintained.
3) The laundromat is not very secure -- you have to keep a sharp watchout so that some punk doesn't steal all your stuff.
stupid comments. I think you have a laundry phobia. You also just quoted my sig line like it has anything to do with what I just posted.
Well, it certainly wasn't obvious to me that it was a sig line, which generally are some sort of clever quote rather than an ordinary sentence. You were talking about about XP and the line Consider the business model of your local laudromat -- they are in it for the long haul seemed to logically follow: Laundromats make money by renting time on their machines, and so in the end come out richer than if they just sold machines, which is presumably the strategy Microsoft hopes to accomplish with XP.
Hey, yer not kiddin',
.html from MSWord (after the handy warning that html does not support all the Word formatting - duh) it encodes it as one "-" and the second as a special character "emdash".
The worst is that MSWord automatically inserts two dashes "-" for you when you type.
When you export to
All browsers I've tested will skip over the encoding error except [drumroll]Explorer![rimshot]
It displays it as "the place - &emdash Chicago"....
Thank you, Bill....
=tkk
Bill Gates - Creationist?!?
But once you get a free program, nobody can come and say "give it back" (delete it now I command you) - you can keep using it as long as you want to.
Yep, subtle satire. Nothing better.
************************************************ ** *
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
The only thing the ugly ho'll ever swallow is your credit card. Nobody uses M$ stuff for anything mission-critical anyway. Just office apps.
I don't know anybody who's had a choice who has actually gone further than NT 4. sp 4.
M$ has nothing on 64 bit+ platforms. That's all Unix($)/Linux(0$) already. and that's where we're all going.
Passwords are spookable, Your face and/or your voice uttering a phrase is a lot harder to spoof.
32 bits is fine until you take biometric security into consideration. Then 32 bits just isn't enough. And then you're M$ free.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The Office 95 users will be likely to go that route, since they otherwise would have to pay the full price of XP.
StarOffice isn't the only one out there. KOffice (part of the KDE project is also coming along nicely. It is part of the RedHat 7.1 release (despite their push for GNOME) and is quickly showing itself to be capable and fast evolving.
Once the Microsoft file formats are reverse engineered to provide full import and export capability, you could easily see something like KOffice show up in corporate offices. Most people don't use 80% of the features in MS Office, so why pay for them?
World Beach List, my latest project.
Microsoft is pushing people to buy Office XP not for the new features but because it hides Clippy. That's pretty much it. $300 for an upgrade just to hide the Office Assistants (they'll still be on the help menu, just not on by default). Microsoft could release a 100KB patch to do the same thing. [Also see News.com, The Register, and MSBC NewsSource.]
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
Well, I work for another Fortune 50 company, General Motors (my opinions are not those of GM, yadda yadda...they don't even LIKE my opinions :)
:), which is a combination of Win95 and WinNT 4 desktops. We're just now making the move to GM OnLine 2000, which is all Windows 2000-based desktops.
I would have to say that GM is more firmly in the Microsoft camp now than before.
Sure, Windows and Office XP aren't in the pipeline at GM. We ran Windows 3.1 on our desktops until 1999. (!)
They moved to GM OnLine in that year (no, there's no popup ads
Furthermore, GM IS&S has big plans to migrate its CAD desktops, running Unigraphics, from Solaris and HP-UX to Windows 2000.
XP is not on the pipeline because it takes them so long to implment a platform...it took something like 3 years to implement Windows 95 and NT 4. They promised that half of the desktops by 4Q 2000 would be Windows 2000-based, I have yet to see one single Windows 2000 desktop, other than the 4 CAD workstations we have as part of a pilot to use Windows 2000 in the CAD environment.
And I have heard rumors of a possible migration to XP at some point. The problem is that the leadership GM IS&S (the CIO's and such) are a bunch of clueless morons who seem to be getting major kickbacks from M$.
They know that Windows 2000 is an inadequate platform for high-end Unigraphics work. Several of us that work with UG have told them that. The engineers even know that. There are problems with Win2k's 2 GB memory limitation, for example. (A model of car, complete with weld points can easily take 2 GB of memory by itself, for instance). But none of this is stopping the lemmings from jumping on the M$ platform.
*sigh*
As long as there are clueless droids and suits in charge, the old motto "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" becomes "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft." and the cycle continues.
My journal has hot
No, it's 2GB for the kernel and other ring 0 stuff and 2 GB for applications.
And Solaris can address gobs more memory than 4 GB.
My journal has hot
in any case, NT should be able to address 64GB of ram, but only map 2GB into any one app.
We're talking about 1 app here...Unigraphics. While it's possible to run multiple instances of UG, it's often not desirable because it's a copy protected application (yes, even in this day and age) with a electronic licensing arrangment.
My journal has hot
MS business model is build on ignorance. There is no logical reason to pay for office software and other software commodities anymore since high quality, free alternatives are available.
However, through FUD, clever marketing and slight abuse of monopoly power, MS has manouvered itself into a position where people assume that MS products are better and are virtually blind for competing products. Based on the above it wouldn't surprise me if openoffice on linux would do a better job of importing win32 created word documents than the apple version of ms office, in any case neither of them does a perfect job.
Office on the apple is a huge succes but most people have never even heard of openoffice. So they end up paying several hundreds of dollars per person (which in larger companies is a significant amount of money) for the privilege of running MS office while a free alternative would be equally usable.
The same applies to server software. In the late nineties it was commonly believed that the windows platform was easier to configure and maintain (largely due to MS agressively marketing NT and later windows 2000). However time has proven that this is not the case for anything but trivial setups (which are handled quite effectively by most linux distributions out of the box) and that in fact free alternatives can be very competitive, especially if they are to be maintained by expert sysadmins anyway (which is true for most larger companies). Since the people working in this area are generally a bit more knowledgeable than the average office user, MS largely failed at positioning windows as an alternative for unix on large systems. In fact just a few days ago news was out on the register that among others Compaq was canceling their line of windows data center machines (reason: nobody bothered to buy them).
Seen in this light it is no surprise that the subscriiption model is being reconsidered since the people taking decisions about this are of the knowledgeable sysadmin type (the same type that's eating their lunch on the serverside already) and may very well opt out entirely.
Jilles
After you upgrade so you can read the newer format, the people you send stuff to need to upgrade so that they can read the stuff you sent. Of course nothing pisses off a customer as much as sending them a document that they cannot read.
OK, I'll bite. Not that this or its parent are worth a reply.
Word has supported HTML as a document format for some time now, but it seems like it's pretty bad, even by Microsoft standards.
It's still fun to watch anyone try to use MS Word to make a document look exactly like they want it to. Extreme frustration.
StarOffice and OpenOffice may not be there yet, but when they do, MS will not be able to compete. I fully expect to be able to install the latest version and send a document (with no "save-as" foolishness) to someone who hasn't upgraded in two years, and the recipient will be able to read it with no problems.
You're right. Star Office and all the other alternatives MUST become better than the MS product. It's not enough to be just as good as MS, even if it takes a few years.
Please no. The Neandertals were smarter and considerably more sturdy.
1) New file formats to create incompatibility.
Office 2000 uses the same file format as Office 97. So where's your 'new file format' there?
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The better Open Source starts looking to people who are capable of using it. It's not yet at the level where secretaries/grandmas can use it, and although I sincerely hope that it reaches that level soon, there's no reason to wish misery on the majority of computer users.
I kinda saw this coming.. It's weird in a sense, but it also makes sense. Why do people rent apartments? Most (if not all) people would prefer to own their apartment but they rent them because it means they have to pay less up front. For many companies, it would be great to be able to subscribe (think "rent") software, as it would make their up front cost much lower. For startups, software license costs can be a big problem - I know this first hand..
So why do people and thus companies feel so uncomfortable with subscriptions when it comes to software? I think the reason is that we fear that the company we are subscribing from would go bankrupt and that it would mean that all the software we are using would expire and we would be in a lot of trouble. In the current economical situation where companies are firing people left and right and where many tech companies are facing serious survival issues, the fears are absolutely called for.
You may think what you like about Microsoft but they aren't stupid. They have user groups that they try their ideas on and they listen carefully to feedback. Nothing is random. If they decide to name something "XP", it's because their studies told them that people like the name. If they decide to drop subscriptions, it's because their studies told them that people were uncomfortable with them.
And then there's the flipside to the coin. For the exact same reason that companies don't want to subscribe software (fear of the software company going belly up), Microsoft doesn't want to have to trust that companies have money to pay for subscriptions. They would rather get all the money up front. There's less risk that way...
Sure, there are a lot of "cool" features in XP but they will never be used by any of the staff in the course of their work so "thanks, but no thanks".
This is independent of any subscription model or anything. The details are so vague about when subscriptions die that unless we are absolutely confident that we will not be stung by this we are not going to even think about it. I'll give you an example: suppose we have an employee in Nigeria and his laptop dies - what we are planning to do is to have the ability to restore his laptop from backup onto a new machine and Fedex it out to him. Will this work in XP? Well, it might, or it might not - suppose we have to send a more modern machine out: will the different hardware disable XP?. Are we going to risk this? No way. This is before we even think about the problems that we have with imaging machines.
No doubt Microsoft will try to force the upgrade path at some point, but I think (hope) that they will be in for a surprise when they do. Under the current situation we buy the basic "OS+Office" package for all employees (plus a few to make sure we don't stray), and a number of licences for such things as Visio and Project. So we know we're covered, and they know we're covered. Everyone's happy, although we're slightly poorer (think of it as audit insurance).
Fast forward a few years to the happy world of subscription based software. Despite paying for the licence and all the rest, there is now this extra hoop to jump. And you cannot tell me that we will be able to jump through this hoop with 100% success rate from anywhere in the world (and the only continent that our employees don't work in is Antarctica). So the onus has shifted - before the sitation was that we could use the software, but microsoft reserved the right to sue use if we broke the agreement. In the future the situation is that MS has to approve the use of the software before it is used. Just wait until the first day the the CEO of a big company finds that he cannot use his new PC because MS is being DDoSed again. Apart from really pissing him off, and him telling all his friends (i.e. other CEOs), he will (hopefully) start to wonder exactly why it is that his company has paid big money for something that, sometimes, doesn't work at all.
Just think back to the Repo man story - imagine XP was a car that, if you moved house, got towed away by the manufacturers, and you had to phone them up to get them to return it. Would this be acceptable? Of course not.
Why would you need to support samba? The client machines are not running it. You set up a samba server and you are done it requires no support. No bozo from sales is going to call you and say "my samba is broke"
War is necrophilia.
It's no probelm at all. Please check again. You install samba ("apt-get install samba" or rpmfind --install samba) and then run swat. Connect via your web browser and you can set up samba in a few minutes. You can also use webmin to set up samba. If you use a windows PDC samba can use that to authenticate if not it can generate a user list from /etc/passwd.
It's probably easier then windows if you use webmin or swat and you have much more control then windows sharing. You can block users by IP or set up different auth schemes in different shares for example.
Sure a typical brainless windows admin probably could not even log into the linux machine let alone configure it but a typical linux admin could do it in no time.
Besides once you set up (or payed someone to do it if you are shop full of idiots) then it works without any further tweaking. Like I said no support costs to speak of.
War is necrophilia.
If you're only interested in the mail features of Outlook, you can run any MAPI mail client, and if your admins have IMAP configured, pretty much any mail client.
I find it curious that only now is Boeing upgrading to Office 2000, and we're just finishing upgrading all our desktops from Win95 to NT4. Not only isn't XP (Windows or Office) in the pipeline, it isn't even on the horizon.
Well, most of the corporate MS licenses allow employees to duplicate their work environment at home, so that's not anything specific to Boeing. Just because Boeing was an Exchange early-adopter doesn't much, since that was largely a server-side rollout. Upgrading the desktop OS, or the productivity suite, is in some ways a more complicated undertaking in a company the size of Boeing.
Boeing probably has about a gazillion in-house apps that had to be tested and some rewritten to run correctly on NT.
Corporate licenses of XP do not have the "fingerprint" restriction, which is why corporate copies of the OS and presumably Office will be the most coveted and pirated of all. Regular joes will end up footing the bill.
Americans, at least, have shown a large hatred of per-use charging. For most of us, our local telco calls are free, cell phones are priced with large bundled minute plans which cost us more than a per-use plan because we hate to watch the clock, we pay $14.95/month for HBO even though we may only watch a movie or two and Dennis Miller, but resist dropping a dime on pay-per-view movies, etc, etc...
Then there's employers. Lots of them also loathe pay-per-use scenarios. Makes budgeting harder. What's the penalty at your company for dialing "411" information instead of using a directory? In many, including mine, it's death by lethal injection.
The only way I can see Microsoft making a go of a subscription model is to charge by the month or year instead of by use, which they already do in their upgrade advantage program.
gee, and here I was thinking this was bad news because it delays the only change in consumer software choice since the shareware revolution.
How we know is more important than what we know.
yer, cause it's not like you cant just save as html.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's probably some term in there that requires him to be in any subscription based software.
That Clippy sure is a tough negotiator. I tell him every time I start up Word that I dont want his fucking help but the persistant little shit just wont go away.
How we know is more important than what we know.
3 Re:Bad News posted on Sunday May 06, @02:49AM EST (Score:2)
attached to Microsoft Postpones Office XP Subscriptions
4 Re:Why do people think they're successful? posted on Friday May 04, @10:55PM EST (Score:3)
I wasnt here yesterday.
How we know is more important than what we know.
and perhaps you need to think outside the box you live in. Consider: if you dont have the software, how do you open the proprietory format? Of course, if you're too stupid to export the file to some neutral format before your subscription runs out maybe you should pay another $50.
How we know is more important than what we know.
By the same logic, wouldn't it make more sense to rent the app and not install anything?
How we know is more important than what we know.
go ahead. but you cant then go and tell everyone who has the same public domain code as what you have copyrighted to pay up -- therefore you do not own it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
dude, you need to chill.
How we know is more important than what we know.
stupid comments. I think you have a laundry phobia. You also just quoted my sig line like it has anything to do with what I just posted.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The whole point of a laudromat is that they dont make more money. Maybe by the time they are fifty. Do the math, these machines are worth like $30k each and there's over a two dozen in your average landromat. Add to that the cost of renting the shop (or buying that land, shya) and you've got a huge initial investment so you can collect chunk change for the rest of your life.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You are indeed correct. The specific passage is:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Which does not exclude me from placing other restrictions on your use of the software. But really the only reason why I would use the GPL is because I want people to be able to use my software. Please notice however that it is my software. You may own the bits but we can say that of commercial software too. The monopoly rights that are granted by Copyright however are definitely mine and that's about all we have to define property of software. Not that I think copyright is at all useful, but it is important to know the law before we begin to challenge it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I can see that you were trying to be funny, but as an open source programmer I remind you that you do not own the software I am so gracious to permit you to run or copy. That is why we put licenses on them. We specifically are saying that we retain ownership to them and that you must agree to the license before you use it. This is pretty obvious with the GPL but it is also true with the BSD license (specifically you agree that you wont sue me if you want to use the software). Even if I put my code in the public domain, and you choose to run it, you do not own it. The only way you can "own" the software you run is by writing it yourself or purchasing the copyright.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What does piracy have to do with this? Are there a lot of cases of Microsoft shipping by aquatic means? How does a country by country introduction prevent their shipping lines from being attacked?
Oh wait, you meant "copyright infringement".
I looked and I looked and I looked, but I couldn't find any way to disable the "crash every couple of hours taking out all changes" option. Neither could I find any way to disable the "lock the application solid every 30 minutes so I have to kill it without saving." option.
I can put up with it drawing funkly red and green lines where it thinks I'm doing the wrong thing. Fact is, like that other fellow, I'd rather complain than set it to not do that. At least that way, the two or three percent of the time that it's pointing out a genuine error, I can get some use out of the feature. However, a word processor that crashes and locks up and loses data randomly is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy.
My preference is to use LyX. The documents that are produced by LyX may not be as pretty (as near as I can tell, the reason that the spec I wrote was converted into "Word" was so we could put the company logo on the title page) but it's the content of the document that's important, isn't it? Besides, LyX has never eaten any of my data and refused to save it when asked.
I should point out that at the company I own, as opposed to the one I work for, we actually deployed Linux on the secretary's desktop and it did, indeed, work exactly this way. I set it up and managed it, and she used it and she had no problems at all, except she never did figure out how to run the games that were installed. (I don't know what was so hard about "stepping on the foot" and selecting "Games", but she's never managed it.)
And with the dot com crash, how safe is an ASP? Maybe it doesn't make sense to base your business on a service when you're not sure if it will be around next month.
No. In fact, the worse MS looks, the more people are likely to look at Open Source before it's ready. And you know what happens then? People either laugh or scream, and run right back to Microsoft vowing never to touch that free shit again.
Star Office and all the other alternatives MUST become better than the MS product, and not just a little bit - obviously better. The cost doesn't really factor into the decision at the corporate level. If and when people flirt with change the change must be compelling, or else that brief look does more damage than good.
Microsoft has created method to keep intranets in order so while your post may have been somewhat positive you're slightly misinformed. They do have an enterprise way of setting things up with their workgroup web set up
Want Root?
They are starting to face consumer resistence to change versions, as they offer nothing the consumer wants.
This is opinionated as if it were true MS wouldn't make as much money yearly as they currently do. Sure many may want change, and may bitch about leaving, but the facts remain little do nothing more than talk trash.
What could be the reason for an exising Office user to buy a Office XP? Difficult question.
Marketing is the reasoning behind it. As soon as a certain number of companies make that switch to a standardized format many others will follow, and you have to keep in mind companies will not reinvent their whole network at the expense of someone's distaste for MS products. It would be rather costly for one, secondly again think about when X amounts of companies make that switch to standardized formats, how will other OS' play with Office XP? Will StarOffice support
They face also a maturing PC market, with declining sales.
"Maturing market" means to me, many may get tired of gcc'ing files and configuring everything and its parent as opposed to the lazy point and click world.
It is not based on customer demand. If you ask
customers what do they want of Microsoft, a subscription based service is unlikely to make to the top-10.
Microsoft is far from a "what the people want" type of OS yet they do well in fact better than anyone out there in terms of sales regardless of what people want. Its more or less +90% a standard in the business world.
That can work, as I say, with a perfect monopoly. I was really looking forward to this subscription idea. To me it looked like the moment we were going to test how strong is Microsoft monopoly, and how much it's based on not having irritated to date their lazy customers too much.
I'm so tired of hearing monopoly its just so "un-chic" a word. Its business everyone does it. Cisco has brought out many networking companies no one bitched, AOL same thing, GE owns just about 40% of everything you could think of whether people know it or not, and is the only company to literally make up what they want to post as sales at the end of year (trust me they post whatever looks good to themselves)
So MS has screwed up down the line, all businesses do somehow, and I'm so tired of seeing the old monopoly argument when it comes to MS along with an Open Source aura of comments surrounding it. Its just outdated and rather lame at this point.
Want Root?
"Software is owned by people. We shall not stifle creativity, talent, and the wants of users for the sake of profit
If this were the case the whole world of computing would be entirely free. No Cisco, you cannot charge for your IOS, etc., etc., etc.
This is not a free world, and although I'm not a Microsoft devotee of any sorts, they are smart enough to pull it off. People bought into the Windows lifestyle because it was simple for them, not everyone can jump in a term and code their needs or wants, so they turn to Open Source to find the neccessities to make their lives simple.
However, lets take a look at the BSD's, and Linux', and other alternative OS', they don't appeal to the average Joe/Josie because they may be too difficult as opposed to just point-and-click, drag-and-drop. Sure it may be easy for someone to learn after some tinkering, but if your a Fortune 500 company your not going to drop your productivity because you have to train secretaries to gcc -o program program.c
Why because its simply not worth it. Sure you can change your network servers, etc., etc., but on the Office level its not feasible. Star Office tries but lacks for the standard "secretary" and not only that but what happens when you need to exchange legacy documents with other companies, clients, etc. then what? Even if you did switch your whole company around doesn't mean others will.
So yes Open Source may be better by very distinctive/somewhat biased at times/benchmarked ways, its still highly disputable from both sides to get a fair take on why you should either continue to use Windows or switch to Open Source.
In the end think about this saying: "When you drink all your water and look at your cup, you say its empty, I say its full of air"
Want Root?
Maybe the reason for the move is, MS could be waiting for the fed (Greenspan) to announce yet another raise or cut in interest rates (which is due for for May the last was to boost the economy sort of a freebie) which could also determine whether companies would jump up and buy buy buy, or wait wait wait. Analysts predict a stronger growth in the third quarter since most people are vactioning and sell off stocks in the summer, etc, etc. (no bs I dig the stock market)
Or perhaps some security flaws (which are high in MS) prompted developers to assess those in order to make it more attractive as opposed to the launch of Windows2000 where speculation was the product had over 60k bugs. By releasing YACP (yet another crappy product) MS could lose huge revenues all over the place, which is crucial especially when alternative OS' have been making their marks. Also remember their so called "Anti Piracy" feature was cracked recently.
Which reminds me... I remember when I was working on Theories in DoS, I made this program called Bubonic which was messing up Windows2000 and NT machines. I repeatedly tried to benchmark what was going on when I made the program and submitted it to Bugtraq since it messed up Windows' rpc crap entirely. Well after the advosry MS released a patch for rpc stuff saying they discovered an undiscovered flaw that affected rpc yadda yadda.
Hardcore Crypto
Want Root?
There are a couple of conditions.
/3GB flag on the kernel
1) You need to be running W2K Advanced Server or better.
2) You need to boot with the
3) You need to have your app marked as 3GB aware.
If any of these three conditions fails, you only get 2GB of user space.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You forgot something:
"Sir," Varick plugs a laptop into a projector
and it blue screens.
Bill chuckles. Then laughs. Then screams as Ballmer, the cat, and The Accountant head for the hills.
John
Shit better not happen!
Anyone who admits to being wealthy must be a very poor person compared to those who really have money. Many people in the world have much more wealth and power than Gates, but they like to hide it. Nothing is better than having control when most people don't realize it. Anyway, personal thoughts. Can't really proove anything other than the wealthy only seem to get so wealthy then all of a sudden their wealth dissapears. Rockefellers in particular were (are?) really good at that.
Rod Taylor
... Regardless of whether it is subscription based or not. Here is why:
When you have to support dozens or hundreds of PCs, you have to find ways to make your job as easy as possible. That means have ghost images of preconfigured systems, the use of a single product key, or other images so you can rebuild systems quickly and easily. By generating a fingerprint for each build, you eliminate the ability to do automated rollouts using images, or a single product key for an entire office. The fact that you own adequete licenses is irrelevent.
Watch the support costs grow when XP is rolled out in a corporate environment.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Then "based on NT technology" must mean "based on New Technology technology." Wow, Microsoft innovates both in software, and in the English language!!
Do you ever use a PIN number? Or an ATM machine?
yer, cause it's not like you cant just save as html.
Have you ever seen the HTML created by MS-Word? Hideous stuff, barely useable, with deprecated tags, incorrectly made entities and invalid ASCII. See http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/ You are better off to save as text, then go in with a text editor and add the markup.
Also, how long until they remove these export mechanisms "in order to serve us better" with more "innovation"? For example, they could make Front Page read Word format (if it doesn't already), then claim that this removes any need for export to text or HTML and that this represents better "integration" (their premier code-word for "lock-in").
--
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
MS is smart. Since all new Office can read old Office documents, but not vice versa, and you have to a pretty advanced user to 'export' to an old version. The upgrade demand is like a virus. My customers upgrade, and send me unreadable documents, I am likely to upgrade to be able to handle this, without upsetting them, and so on. One could speculate that MS could continue this 'enforcement' of revenue without adding any features whatsoever. Although I have heard that they are moving to XML representations now, this won't work anymore. You could then easily set up a Document Translation service on the network, even handled easily by the mail servers...
Have you ever used Word?? To save as an older format, you choose "save as" and choose the format from the list at the bottom. No brain surgery is required. It's about as easy as is can possibly be. As for all the people talking about how Office already has too many features, and they aren't being used, it's obvious you don't use these products very often. In our office, we have a writing team making 500 page documents, using nearly every feature Word has. We have people making databases that use all of Accesses features (and will gladly use XP's Access for the enhanced interopability with MS SQL Server). The average user won't use all the features for writing a letter to mom, but they are far from useless and bloatware.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
I wouldn't be surprised if that's the code name of their business plan.
Instead of doing subscriptions for Office completely, they may try to do it with just one component, like clip art or templates. Maybe $10 per year to have access to the templates. Or they might make the manual available on a subscription basis, with the first year "free". And then if that is successful (or people don't complain too much), then they will go the whole hog. It's not that Microsoft won't go to a subscription model for Office and everything else, but just when and how to introduce it to everyone without chasing their customers away. A monopoly is self-perpetuating only if the majority of the customers aren't pissed off enough to leave en mass.
I personally hate the idea of subscriptions because that will just lead to people paying for software like they pay for cable. I'm personally happy with using older versions of some software, and I only upgrade when the vendor provides new features that I want. But with Microsoft's combination of monopoly status and penchant for changing file formats every two years, one would be forced to upgrade every couple of years just so to open files from others.
I could see Microsoft eventually moving into a mode where even if they didn't do subscriptions, business development could indicate they want to change the file format (regardless of the engineering requirements) just to "invigorate" the upgrade sales.
Situations like this are why I created my new sig.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
If you rent software in some countries, you might be responsible for keeping it in good shape and fixing bugs. Maybe Microsoft has finally discovered this and reacted accordingly.
However, the current scheme of selling licenses without time limit can be extended to a subscription scheme without actually renting software: just release a new Office version every year, and make sure that it's slightly incompatible. In fact, Microsoft announced this kind of strategy back in 1995 or so (of course, not the incompatibility part), but they didn't manage to release their software more regularly for some reason.
Sure, we know it's easy. But MS makes the new file format incompatible and they make it default. Your average office drone who is busy sending stupid elf-bowling .EXEs to you is not going to take the time to learn how save documents in a compatible format.
The only thing that will happen is this: Bob sends Ned Word-2005 files, but Ned can't open them. What should happen: Ned sends mail to Bob telling him not to be a dimwit and save his documents in the older format. What always happens: Ned calls IT and says "I NEED WORD 2005!". IT gets thousands of these calls, they buy Word 2005. Ooops, Word 2005 will only run on Windows 2005! Quick, buy Windows 2005 too!
This is the game that MS plays.
Truthfully, there have been no new features since Word 6.0 that are worth breaking compatability for. Save 'em all in 6.0 format.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
There is actually now forward compatibility between Office 95 and Office 2000 applications. It is possible to Word 2000 native documents in Word 95 (we have the filters installed at work - Office 2000 is the desktop standard under NT and Office 95 is the laptop standard under Windows 95). Cutting between the 2 just does not work... The major problem that I have with it is that the amination under Powerpoint 95 is keyed off the Z order of the individual images on the screen whereas in Powerpoint 2000 it is a seperate (and much better) order that allows you to build one item behind another (good for overlapping lines or part offset boxes in depth).
Releasing those converters could be on of the biggest mistakes Microsoft ever made...
http://scottish.politicaldiscussion.org
Training users how to use large complex pieces of software (like Microsoft Office) is a good thing. It improves productivity tremendously. I once trained 50 users (out of 250) and their usage jumped so dramatically the network started saturated and we had to move over from hubs to switches.
You get even better productivity improvements if you teach people to type. The number of £1,000 a day techies I have worked with who take an hour over a 5 minute document is unbelievable.
http://scottish.politicaldiscussion.org
Seems to me that StarOffice 5.2, freely available if not open source, does pretty much everything that M$ Office does. And it has the added virtue of working equally well on the Intel versions of Linux. And it imports and exports M$ Office docs extraordinarily well.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!!
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
There is an article in the Toronto Star Newspaper that points out how users disatified with MS Office may be driven to switch to an alternative and this is an opportunity for Corel. The new WordPerfect Office 10 (WPO X) has lots of new features and still runs on windows 95. ZDNet in a rare unbiased move actually just gave it a good review.
It is shipping now and seems to be selling well at Amazon where it it is currently #38 in sales with a 5 star buyer's rating.
Now everyone are not going to switch over night but Microsoft cancelling the subscriptions may be an indication that it is worried about messing this release up.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
i asked this same question many a time when i worked in a MS house. There are a few answers that i always got. 1st - clueless office drones read about some (lame) new 'feature' of Office($ver) and insist to the IT folks that they need it. This eventually annoys the shit out of them until they break down and buy it. 2nd - Much more compelling reason is that your MS house does business with other MS houses that upgrade. The new default format is incompatable with the older Office version. Your office drones need the new version just to read documents that they get from other businesses. why do those people make the switch? see answer one.
-- Hail Eris
I work on a college campus that has to deal with both PCs and Macs, and throughout the versions of Office that claim some or pretty good compatibility with earlier ones or even just across platforms, it seems like it's just specs. Nothing substantial accomplished in the real world because all the features offered to make users upgrade are implemented differently by the different developing teams that Microsoft has for their supported platforms. And I thought [internal] code-sharing was supposed to be Microsoft's key to success. But check out programs like Explorer 5 for macs and see what's been left out.
... but won't the mac version mess up my footnotes?"
:'(
Back to the topic, students still come up to me at the helpdesk to print their papers when the PC side of the lab gets filled, even though the iMacs are unused and have a *newer* version of Office (98). Reason? "My fonts look different" or "It won't fit in the 5 page limit if you convert it" or "Hmm
Apparently, people aren't willing to even sit down to learn what *should* be the same program even if it means waiting on a queue while a compatible version is available. Will this same thing happen with XP and the upcoming version for the MacOS / OS X? Gee, didn't they just release office 2001? I think When an office suite is updated every year you have little chance to make good ports.
It am starting to fall behind in the # of versions we support (some people never upgrade and the college can't force them to or put Office on a server since the software isn't free).
Sorry about the incoherence you may find. It's almost 6 AM and I haven't slept because WHquestion is dying in 6 hours
"Wireless : LAN
Office 2000 had a compatible word format to 97. And I remember a patch was available from Microsoft for office 95 to allow it to import word97 files. Excel/access/etc may be a different story though.
html, or .rtf for Word documents.
html or .csv for Excel documents.
Access? Who cares, just access the mdb file from ADO.
html files for Powerpoint presentations.
I was kinda hoping this year and next year would would be when the horns locked between free software (as in GPL/BSD licensed) and subscription-based (as in Microsoft's). I felt strongly this would be the epic battle...and the turning point. It kinda irks me to see it delayed.
Why is now a better time than later? For one the economy is slowing down and that means the peanut counters are watching what is spent. Also, all the new Microsoft software doesn't have major advancements (ie. major imitation of other innovative software). That, combined with subscription based software spells disastor, IMHO. Being an IT Manager I see no reason to upgrade my 100 machines running w2k and office2k just to pay XX money XX times a year. Without subscription based software a lot of managers will probably fall into the same upgrade routine down every two years thus far (wait for complaints someone emailed a Word doc they can't read with their slightly older yet basically just as functional copy of Word).
With Samba's new features like adding printers and remote management as well as ACL lists coming into maturity the outlook (no pun intended) looks bad for MS on all fronts. I want the 2 bulls locking horns this year. I know a bunch of you say they are already locking, but I disagree. It has been mostly a stare down until the upgrade cycle comes around this time.
Lets remember, IT Managers only have so much ability for change. No CIO/COO/CFO is going to go for non MS stuff unless it seriously hits them in the pocket book...and on a monthly basis. Status quo is good enough until then.
Anyway, lets all hope MS changes their mind back because the time is right with the slowing economy, the maturity of free software and lack of real "new stuff" in the next versions of MS software, for free software to win the war.
Has anyone written a macro that defaults saving to older format?
I was looking forward to the huge wave of Star Office converts...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I wouldn't call that irony. Just a double-entendre or unintentional pun. Somebody's been listening to too much Allanis Morrisette.
IIRC, the Macintosh operating system and Apple IIx were dominant (small "d" -- at the very least a *major* competitor) in the business market until at least the release of Windows 3.1 in 1991. That was seven years (after the release of Macintosh in 1984) that Microsoft was playing catch-up big-time. And badly. It wasn't *really* until "Chicago" (Windows 95) was released that they reached monopolistic ability in the market. Even then, I believe it was at least in small part due to horrific mismanagement at Apple.
Second, I'm not sure how you can claim that Linux is "the only true cross-platform, scalable mainstream OS on the market" in light of OS X. I will be the first to admit that OS X has a ways to go but Apple is quite apparently committed to it with a *lot* more organization and financial backing than Linux. (And have you seen the Cocoa development environment? Unbelievably impressive.)
I'm not knocking Linux. I've used and I like what it represents. But it has NO marketing behind it to speak of (as compared to OS X) and couldn't in it's wettest dream hope to be as pretty, let alone as usable for the average office worker.
I'm a Macintosh fan (there's the disclaimer) but realistic. And I still see no way in hell that Linux (at least in it's current incarnation) will ever have more *desktops* than Macintosh... unless Apple hits another "dark age" in management. Which is never out of the question.
However, here is where Microsoft will need to be a bit more creative. First, Microsoft is not Corel. Corel does not have the kind of OS monopoly that Microsoft has which it can leverage to enter the Linux game. So the comparison with Corel is not valid.
There are many things Microsoft can do. The simplest and most obvious is to start adding products to Linux which are closed source and which only operate with Microsoft's open sourced Linux. Internet Explorer would be a good product for this. So while Microsoft Linux will be open sourced it will have an edge over other distros because it will come prepackaged with IE. Similar other creative bundling can easily elbow out the competition so that the MS becomes the mainstream distro.
To the moderators who moderated my original comment down, I am deeply disappointed in what appears to be a knee-jerk pro open source reaction. As open-sourcers people need to understand Microsoft and the moves open to it. Without this kind of exploration Linux is a sitting duck.
This is completely on-topic and not off-topic as the moderator has mistakenly asserted. The discussion is about Microsoft's operating system strategies and what it will do in the future. Clearly Linux needs to figure in this discussion too since Microsoft acknowledges it as a big threat to its server OS marketshare. What-if scenarios help us analyze the situation and see it more clearly. Think of this like a chess game.
--
Milk, it does a body GOOD.
I find it curious that only now is Boeing upgrading to Office 2000, and we're just finishing upgrading all our desktops from Win95 to NT4. Not only isn't XP (Windows or Office) in the pipeline, it isn't even on the horizon.
If a company that's as cozy with MICROS~1 as Boeing is isn't sending them huge globs of cash for the latest and greatest Windows and Office, imagine what LockMart or Exxon or the other Fortune 50 companies are doing.
I don't think MSFT's corporate bread and butter customers ever bought into their 2-year cycle of discard and replace. Even IT managers whose driveways mysteriously gained new Porsches have a hard time convincing their CEOs that it's time to negotiate a new contract with MSFT when they just finished nailing down the old one.
And if they feel like they got a good deal (CEO's who've negotiated hard always think they got a good deal), why not ride it out as long as they can?
So the short answer as to why Microsoft is pulling back on their plans for XP is a problem I've been waiting to come home to roost there for some time: not just revenue, but cash flow. You can ride on the back of a tiger only so long before he turns around and notices you. All this scurrying around MSFT is doing with .NET and software rental is because they're beginning to realize that their ride is over.
They say that 60% of users still run the old versions, I would say that is true. I have been to a lot of companys here in Germany and most of them run Office 97, why? What's new in Office 2000? nothing specail, what's new in XP? nothing special, newer GUI, more web crap... I tested the beta version of Office 2002, to tell you the truth I found nothing that would want me to spend the $300 or so to upgrade. I did not try the voice becouse sound was not installed, but from what I heard that is not any good.
Back to my point, what can you add more into a office suite? MS Office 97 has everything I would need. How many people do you know that write VB software in Word? The average user types up a report with pictures formats it and prints. Office 2000 does it a little smother but that is about it. I could understand if the upgrade costed under $30 or so, but I think Office upgrade costs around $200 or so (correct me if I'm wrong)
So my question to MS, why should I spend $239 to upgrade???
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Or maybe someone just posted the OEM, no-registration required versions on the net, freenet, several hotline servers, wrapster, limewire, bearshare et al.. sites and MS decided to say "fuckit."
It is nice to know MS saw the light.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
If I may provide a little Slashback -- the Sunday Times report that Gates has dropped to second place was completely inaccurate. It ascribed all of Sam Walton's inheritance to one son instead of splitting it across his four kids and widow. (Details here)
well. ok.. It's not like the story was based on factual info anyways.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I'm bored. Slightly drunk. At home, on a saturday night. Alone. No, I'm not bitter. No. This is not part of the story. Enjoy.
Dark room: Scrawny man with a Microsoft T-shirt sits by a roaring fire, holding a white cat. His name-tag - emblazoned in gold, reads "Bill". Several disemboweled penguins hang from the wall, dripping entrails and blood.
A old bald man enters.
"Mr. Gates, you wished to see me?"
"My CEO, ah, yes. Come in Mr. Ballmer" The scrawny man responds. Stroking the white cat, he continues.
" The United States Department of Justice has damaged our financial situation. I am no longer the richest man in the world. What should we do? We can not allow such treachery to go without punishment!"
"Sir, we could use this opportunity to unveil our secret weapon!"
"You're not talking about . .
" Yes, I am"
The room goes deathly quiet, even the squealing penguins in the cages fall silent.
"Very well then - Send in . .
Dramatic pause, lightning flashes, thunder, well, thunders.
" The ACCOUNTANT!"
More thunder, we catch a glimpse of a worker with an arc welder, picking up a large thin piece of metal off the floor.
A scrawnier person enters. He looks very ferrety, almost identical looking to Mr. Gates. He wears an armband of a flying window. In other circumstances, he would be called "mini me". This however, is not Austin Powers, nor even a multi-million dollar movie. It is a slashdot post.
" Greetings from the boiler room Chief Software Architect, Sir." He goosesteps in, legs seemingly without joints.
Penguins squeal in terror, off to the side, we see a small daemon, begin to cry. The white cat darts off to the corner.
Varick salutes - "Heil Microsoft!"
Gates nods approvingly, "So Mr. Varick, what have you come up with this time?"
"Sir," Varick plugs a laptop into a projector - "World Domination" is projected on the wall.
In a high pitched voice, he continues, " By not hiring millions of recently un-employed tech workers to answer phones and "authorize" versions of XP, Microsoft can, single-handedly, doom the United States Of America to a several long years of recession."
Balmer nods, " Ultimately their weak government will fall to hordes of angry citizens - and the politicians will die slow, painful, brutal deaths! Utter chaos will result! Cities without leaders!"
The slide shows a burning city, with politicians hanging from lamp posts.
Varick switches slides and squeals "And we shall be the beacon of hope and stability! We will swoop in and save the people from their own madness!"
Maniacal laughter rebounds in the room.
Gates stands up, lifts up both arms and bellows "One World, one Web, one Program!" The screaming of the penguins crescendo's, as Gates' cat tears into them, seemingly insane - feathers fly through the air and blood splatters all over Varick - "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Betriebssystem" - he screams (One people, one realm, One operating system according to the fish), the daemon falls next - torn in half.
" We shall rule the world!" Ballmer yells " We shall be Gods!"
Several minutes later, the frenzy stops, leaving only the fire, pools of blood, the three men and a bloody cat.
"Fuck with Microsoft will they?" Gates asks in a hushed voice. "Fuck with Microsoft?"
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Really, what more can be added to Office that's needed. Been using windoze for how many years now and still frustated with the ms word bloatware features. damn them.
Get up!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
- Result 2: you are forced to use Office YY.
I won't even get into hardware that is technologically or legally prevented from being usd by Free OSs. There's too many ugly developments coming from there already.\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing
(The original Tech Report article is here, and has some more interesting tech data.)
Bottom line, they are going to try to get you any way they can.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Making Office XP a subscription is yet again shooting themselves in the foot; I agree! But they are only good at that :P
Karma whorin' since 1999
Have you guys seen their nasty recommended system requirements for this thing? They want at least a Pentium II/III (400 Mhz) processor with 128 Megs of RAM. They also recommend a 3D accelerated graphics card.
WTF for? Is the talking paperclip rendered in 3D now? Does he have his own little 3D house, with a 3D paperclip family and real life experiences? Jesus' shit, this isn't a top of the line game. It's a damn office suite. You type stuff in and print it out. You thought StarOffice was bloat, this is just nasty.
You can try it for 30 Days here.
--
The World is Yours.
Woah, a good first post! I guess there truly is a first for everything!
The subscription model lowers the cost of entry, which would in theory increase the number of customers. Office, however, has virtually no competition, so it likely would make them less money, especially in the short term. Microsoft realized that 90% of companies will buy Office and also pay to upgrade it every couple versions, regardless of the cost (within reason).
This kind of stuff is why I hate Microsoft, but I can't deny they have some good business minds there.
That's my theory, but what do I know?
Here in Europe Microsoft is already in hot water with the ongoing EU investigation.
I believe that companies will start using linux/bsd desktops and servers exactly when it becomes obvious that it will cost them less money (hardware+software+maintenance+training) than the Microsoft-way.
So far Microsoft has a huge advantage in the training cost category, because that's the OS most people have already used at home (or at least have seen their kids use it). Using something like KDE would be already confusing because it is different: "What do you mean? Why does doubleclicking on an icon start two copies of the program? It doesn't do that on my home computer! This is hard!" and probably none of the non-tech staff would have ever even seen it.
Getting people pissed isn't enough, it'll have to show up in the company bottomline too.
That's what I want to know...
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
This is bad news really. Just remember the worse MS is, the better Open Source starts looking.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The Microsoft spokeswoman emphasized that the company remains "committed to the subscription model and definitely plan(s) to continue with plans to deliver subscription offerings worldwide. She described Microsoft's new strategy as a "more metered approach," with the company "rolling out subscription offerings on a country-by-country basis."
So basically, "We will try this out in more oppressed countries first that have people in them that are used to being screwed over."
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Could be that they are about to implement some feature that can handle subscriptions in Windows XP. Maybe they want Windows XP to be out before they start relying on subscriptions on other software.
Im the webmaster for my company. I have little to no input as to what platform or software we use internally, outside of my web domain. All I know is I have to run Outlook because our mail server is Exchange, and I have to run Excel and Word because thats what the rest of the company uses, and I need to view what coworkers send me.
Actually that makes the most sense of all... needing to upgrade to read the newer format that other people are using. That's a horrible shame.
My company is a Microsoft shop (other than my machines) and so, to my dismay, we use Office. I'm really curious to see if we will upgrade to Office XP, and if so, why we would upgrade. What could they possibly add to Office that would warrant paying the upgrade cost? I know our company RARELY uses any of the bells and whistles later versions have provided. I don't see anything in the feature list that would benefit anyone I know to upgrade. Between the cost of the software, deployment time, orientation, and inevitable bugfixes, where is the gain? Don't you benefit more from productivity software by sticking with what's familiar and is already working fine? What exactly is the purpose of this corporate trend to want to run the very latest bleeding-edge productivity app?
It's inevitable that Linux, because of the fact it's the only true cross-platform, scalable mainstream OS on the market, will eventually gain a greater number of desktop users than Apple.
It's inevitable that BeOS, because of the fact it's the only true cross-platform, scalable mainstream OS on the market, will eventually gain a greater number of desktop users than Apple.
hm. doesn't appear history's on your side this time out.
--saint----
Maybe I'll get the gig, and have a chance to implement a back-translator as part of my Grand Plan to have the mail server (already running Linux, because a friend there has established the beachhead) pull off attachments and defang Office documents of their (potentially Trojan) macros before Joe Average User inside the firewall ever sees them. I'll leave the original version in the Quarantine directory on the mail server in case anyone needs it, of course...
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Who comes up with these comments like "getting too much heat from IT managers" ?
Presumably somebody in university/home-hacker or generally somebody who's not worked relatively high up in IT.
Many IT managers would welcome a yearly subscription model. Any reasonably sized company has budgets, and this covers IT. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to decide 18 months in advance what software you'll be running, how many new users you can expect (often without help from HR).
To have at least the main office and o/s packages that companies use on a yearly subscription would go someway to help this. Medium-large companies like fixed monthly payments even if it does work out slightly more expensive in the end.
Why do you think financing is so popular with businesses? It's for the same reasons.
[)amien
I'm sure the next version of Office will get rid of that pesky "Save As" feature (or maybe that will be part of a premium subscription package).
And strangely, you'll find copying to the clipboard from Word won't... work... anymore. Wonder how that could be? =P
Enjoy delicious Microsoft Word!
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
...I like the department this time. =P How's that joke go? "Boil the frog slowly or it'll jump out of the pot"? =)
As for Office XP subscriptions, I don't think we've seen the last of this. I just think MS realized they would have too hard a sell with that. I think they'd much rather sell Office XP and put it on all Windows desktops, and THEN go over to subscriptions if people want to keep accessing their documents. Gotcha.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
The consumer, of course.
Windows 2000 is just a renamed NT 5.0.
Based on the increasingly strange and strident remarks coming from MS lackeys regarding open source, and their steadfast refusal to move away from their almost unbelievably uptight and mean-spirited programming models, this piece of evidence leads me to believe that M$ has really got their backs up against the wall. It's them against the rest of the world. And they want my medical records? Not likely.
So, let's press on. They can't hold out much longer!
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I wonder if they considered another "more metered approach" - don't they have any other products that have a smaller market (or are possibly more amenable to the subscription concept) than Office? Try working those products first. Office must be a nightmare when it comes to strategy changes... everyone uses it from college students to grandmothers and small businesses to the largest multinationals. Besides, is "country-by-country" going to prevent pirating and give an accurate idea of expectations?
"My mother works for Microsoft now. A whole other cult."
Asses it seems. I still wonder why it is people so strongly rely upon MS office "products", especially when there are viable alternatives like paying cheaper licenses to SUN for StarOffice. Or hell, compiling up and using OpenOffice. I will be jumping for joy when OpenOffice reaches the point that Mozilla is at now. It (OpenOffice) is getting to the point where is it useable for mild uses, still buggy, but it works great if all you need is to view MS formats (like .xls).
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I don't care what it looks like, it WORKS doesn't it!?!
from the article-
"By switching to subscriptions and using a new authentication system that forces users to register each copy of Office that is locked to the computer hardware, Microsoft hopes to combat overseas piracy."
I hope that this doesn't imply that each copy of office is registered to a specific machine, and non transferable. That would be business suicide.
I personally think they nerfed the release because they are having problems selling the idea of subscription based software. With Single-pay software, you buy it, and its more-or-less yours, to transfer between machines as long as only one copy is running at a time, for as long as you own the software. With subscription based software, you dont own the software, you are leasing it, meaning that when you quit paying, you quit getting to use it.
From a business standpoint, lets say a new copy (nonSubscript) of office runs an outstanding $100 USD (which may be off the mark by a lot but this is hypithetical). In order for a subscription based version to be available and worthwhile the subscription fee would have to be rediculously low to offer an incentive for businesses to go with it. If The subscription price were even $5 USD a month, you would be losing out after only the second year.
Now I'm thinking with about a 3-4 year half-life in software before an upgrade is needed, and then tacking on overhead for the nightmarish support logistics that any subscription based service comes with, that there is no way that that can make this happen and make it profitable, and still make it worthwhile for any buisness to go with over a nonsubscription based piece of software.
RA7
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"Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" - RWE
"slashdot org is slowly going down the drain with all these lame ass stories which none gives a shit about does anyone know another site which does not allow such single sided views on things they post or am i damned to depend on slashdot for ever"
Well, Mr. AC, you are not 'damned' to use anything at all. I, for one, try to get my stories from a wide variety of sources, using slashdot as only one. If you really don't like what is being posted, either post as a real being, instead of a wussy AC, and influence the topics that you know about. Complaining in code as an AC does not help Slashdot get better one bit.
Or you could just get an enigma and post something a bit harder to crack.
Random Musings
i just remembered that about a month ago here in budapest i saw some adverts on a bus... the text went something like
imagine: you don't have to buy software, and yet all your computer systems are legal!
(piracy is very common among small businesses in central europe)
dunno if they're really doing the subscription thing over here, but i'd be curious to know whether it was advertised in the states.
This Like That - fun with words!
And if it had been on schedule, they would have called it Windows 97.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - ast
And in the end, there were two and two alone: The Proprietary, and the Free; The enslaving and the liberating. They made war against each other, but only one - that which was Free - liberated and empowered the individual.
And, assuming NT means "New Technology" (O'Reilly Link, WinNTMag.com Link.) Then "based on NT technology" must mean "based on New Technology technology." Wow, Microsoft innovates both in software, and in the English language!!
PK: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
C|Net also had the article (link is in plain text for the goat paranoid):
m l? tag=lthd
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5832371.ht
I'd say that they probably had some contract problems with Clippy the office assistant. There's probably some term in there that requires him to be in any subscription based software.
Maybe this is an attempt to save face after looking like a moron with that Mundie speech.
Here we are saying "This software is yours, do whatever you want with it," as it was in the beginning.
Then Microsoft came along and implemented a version of BASIC and said, pay me for this, and you can use it.
Then it said, pay me, and you can use this version, and no other version, and nobody else can use this version -- he's gotta pay too.
And finally evolved into, "This software is not yours. It's ours. But if you pay us, we'll let you use it--but only in ways officially sanctioned by us. After all, it's our software. And we won't tell you how you're allowed to use it until you've already agreed to the terms."
At this point, we gain popularity, stemming from the days in the beginning when all was pure and good: "Software is owned by people. We shall not stifle creativity, talent, and the wants of users for the sake of profit. Brothers and sisters hear me, this software belongs to you. Do with it as you please."
But these calls were stifled by Microsoft, "All your software are belong to us," they called. But, people got tired of giving money to Microsoft whenever Microsft said so. Microsoft can only make money when people buy more software... if people don't upgrade, Microsoft loses. Microsoft's biggest competitor is itself.
"Lo", they said, "your software belongs to us. No longer shall you be constrained to ancient practices of 'purchasing,' you will now rent your software from us. You shall pay us money, and we shall let you use our software for a month."
The free-software prophets said, "You own your own software. Do not succumb to the demands of the false gods of Redmond." And they were right. And the people agreed.
Microsoft realized they were in trouble. "We shall persuade the people that it makes no sense to let people have `property' on their hard drive." The RIAA and MPAA agreed. Microsoft told the people, "Behold, do not believe the lies told to you by the Free Software Foundation. They go against the ideals of our society. They are un-American"
And DMCA had been passed for the government was duped.
But the people were wise; they should own their files. They scorned and laughed at Microsoft.
Microsoft was angered. "We shall try to trick them into thinking that they do own their sofware. For we have a 'Shared-source' policy." They were full of crap.
Microsoft was again scorned at. "Perhaps," they said, "it will look like they owned their software if we didn't explicitly say that we were only letting them rent it." And it was so.
And michael said, "Microsoft has dropped the Office XP subscription plan , at least for the near future. Wonder if this means they were getting too much heat from IT managers, or if they have something else up their sleeve."
Reminds me of the Ralph Bakshi "Mighty Mouse" episode where he had to call in help from another flying-mammal superhero...Batbat.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
So what does the government use to PAY the company that PRINTS the money? There is no "company" that prints money. The government prints it's own money :)
It pays it's employees with tic-tacs, an unlimited supply of red tape, and weekly full body cavity searches.
Casual Games/Downloads
Currently about 60 percent of Office users work on either version 95 or 97, not the more recent Office 2000. In a strange move, the company has opted not to offer Office XP upgrades to version 95 licensees, which make up about 10 percent of Office users. They will have to pay full price.
My personal reasoning for this is that the upgrades are usually just a little cheaper than the full version. If the upgrade was $50 people would most likely stay up to date, but as long as the upgrades are %80 of what the full version costs people will stay in the 'good enough for now' catagory. The use of year marks on there operating systems always reminds me cars.. You don't want to get a new one every year because it costs to much, but you want to stay close to the new software releases. Some people want the newest and greatest, others want a one time purchase that lasts 5 to 10 years before they replace it.
So they concocted the subscription idea. The idea is good, really. After all, software is a service, and should be sold as a service. But.
Catch 22: But you have to provide the service. There is a message before that I think is dead on. You cannot eat the soup and keep it too. That translates to You cannot sell Office as a service and charge for it too. At leas as you were charging before. If it's a service, it's a service, and you charge for the service, but not for the product, or at least something nominal. It's like having to pay a big lump of money to be able to use a taxi company. And then paying as before each time you take a cab. That could be an interesting move for the taxi company, specially if it has a monopoly. But the customers are not going to like it, and if the monopoly is not perfect, it's not going to last.
And that's the final problem with that scheme. It is not based on customer demand. If you ask customers what do they want of Microsoft, a subscription based service is unlikely to make to the top-10. So Microsoft is doing it based only in her own insterests. That can work, as I say, with a perfect monopoly. I was really looking forward to this subscription idea. To me it looked like the moment we were going to test how strong is Microsoft monopoly, and how much it's based on not having irritated to date their lazy customers too much.
So the news are a little dissapointing. But doesn't matter. We knew after all they were not stupid, specially not maketing stupid. But the structure of the situation is against them. They are dammed if they do, and if they don't. The software market is changing, and Microsoft will have to adapt. And any adaptation is bound to reduce her size and power, because they are based on the old paradigm, on the old market. I am really interested on seeing the next step of this soap opera.
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Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
These are *consumer* prices... Effectively, what they are doing is financing the thing, splitting the huge amount into smaller monthly payments.
And you know what, it might actually work for countries where people (read: consumers) can't afford to go out and buy a copy of Office for the equivalent of US$300 or so. Paying that little a month is much more feasible.
Of course, it would be much better to make the software cheaper and finance it properly than have people pay to have the software be tied to a central server, but in the end, it's just Microsoft's (totally backwards) way of fighting rampant piracy...
They are still going forward with it in Brazil, where they announced the whole subscription thing in a big bash with Terra Lycos. Check out the little banner on the front page:
Terra Brazil
The deal would be that Terra would host Microsoft's applications, and users would also pay through Terra's systems.
The price? About US$6 upfront, plus about US$13 monthly.
Recent activity on the XP-beta tester lists suggests that the product activation methods are running into a few problems in the real world. (Like oh, say, arbitrairly shutting off access to the product, very bad thing to have happen at a big company depending on ms office) It is quite possible that microsoft has decided that discretion is the better part of profits, and will hold back on a major american release of subscription based software untill they are sure they have this whole sending-and-activating software over the internet thing worked out.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
My apologies. I was unaware that OpenOffice would not make on Win9x. However, the point remains that there are free alternatives to Microsoft Office, and StarOffice will run on Win9x/ME systems.
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We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
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There are some excellent competitor software packages (OpenOffice is one that comes to mind, is free and is bloody brilliant - and did I mention almost 100% compatible with Office2K?) available. Microsoft know this, but the people do not, and Microsoft would like it to stay that way. That way, they can screw everyone as much as they like and no-one will know any better. Advertise OpenOffice whenever you can!
-==-
We are Microsoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
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After reading this I had to post about an experience I had a couple of weeks ago. I work for a company thats pretty much an all Windows shop (I'm in the process of changing that!!) We have about 250 users. About 2 weeks ago I received a phone call from some reseller trying to get us to upgrade To Office 2000. Part of the deal was a 20% discount and a free upgrade to XP when it comes out. We are currently running '97 Standard and a few 2K Standard installs. After talking to this guy I said 'Fine...I don't have the numbers in front of me but how much would 50 licenses cost?" He worked it out and said something like $17K CDN less the discount which worked out to $15K. I almost fell out of my chair. So I said 'Okay thats fine..I want to go to management and tell them we need to upgrade to 2K and we need to spend $15K. What (economic) benefit would we receive for our $15K?? Management isn't going to spend this kind of money unless theres some benefit to the company". The rest of the conversation went something like this: Salesman: 'Oh I got that right here.' (shuffling paper sound) 'You can keep track of your clients with an Access Database...' Me: 'But we're running Office standard. We don't get Access' Salesman: 'Oh right. Okay you can use Powerpoint to do presentations to your staff and clients..' Me: 'We have about 4 users that use Powerpoint..not worth $15K. Got anything better.' Salesman: 'With Office 2K you get voice recognition software so your staff don't have to type..' Me: 'Sorry. We're running Windows Terminal Server with thin clients. No sound card. No microphone. No speakers. Plus have you seen how fast our staff type?' Needless to say the salesman was stumped. He sent me the quote and I filed it under 'G'. This is what I want to see from Microsoft - Give us the benefits. Don't tell us how much prettier or stable it is. Tell us why its worth paying a small fortune for their 'steaming pile of monkey dung'!! Thanks. Long Live the Penguin!!