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Gateway To Use Corel Over MS For Office Suite

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the first-door-to-your-left dept.

djellusion writes "Dealing yet another blow to Microsoft, Gateway has announced that it will be using Corels Wordperfect office suite instead of Microsoft Office. I can only see this as a good thing because friendly competition creates drive for better(less clippy) products. Can I order my system with no office suite please?"

10 of 349 comments (clear)

  1. No news here by gnillort · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All they teach at high schools and colleges now is MS Word due to the widespread acceptance of it over the last six to seven years. Now, because of higher prices caused by piracy, there is a market backlash against it. Most users will pay the extra amount for Microsoft Office, for it is the program they "grew up" with using. So, all HP and Gateway are doing is lowering their visible cost and making it cost extra for the premium Microsoft Office package, which is exactly what free market should encourage.

    1. Re:No news here by davejenkins · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This was predicted some time back. The retail cost of a PC wasdropping toward $400, and some said that it was ludicrous that the office suite software should cost more than the whole computer itself. As that price approaches $400 ($199 anyone?), the retailers are doing just as they should: shaving of the pricey bits in order to gain marketshare through lower pricing.

      Soon enough, OpenOffice (at no cost) will be adopted widely by the big retailers. If AOL were smart, they would switch their business model to not only be an ISP, but an application support clearance venue: AOLOffice, AOLCalendar, AOLFoo all rolled into your $19/month.

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      davejenkins.com |

    2. Re:No news here by e8johan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wouldn't say that the Office (or Word) pricesrise is "caused by piracy". I would say that it has been rised because Micro$oft has been able to establish a de-facto standard with a format so complex that it is down-right impossible to import properly into a competing product (object linking and embedding has made it really difficult) and now they charge for it. In other words: it is due to the lack or competition and a large amount of greed from M$.

  2. Monopoly? What monopoly? by ArthurDent · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow. You got to hand it to Gateway. This call took some serious courage to make. The days of reprisals from M$ for not using their software are probably over, but it still is impressive to be the first big player to take advantage of it.

    I just hope it pays off for them in being able to sell their computers for enough less that people buy more of them!

    Ben

  3. What will really happen by jmcnamera · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What will really happen is that people buying the low-end machines will then borrow a copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 from a friend and copy it.

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    this is not a sig
    1. Re:What will really happen by dre80 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Actually, that's precisely what happens now with these low-end machines, currently bundled with MS Works (oxymoron jokes aside...). Anyone who has to deal with Works will inevitably get peeved enough to find a way to use Word.

      WordPerfect Office is better than MS Works by several orders of magnitude, and it's a complete office suite (unlike the latter). I'd expect that more people will actually use a preinstalled copy of WP-Office than MS Works. That's a good thing, because it will bring directly to the forefront the issue of file compatibility. At the moment, people don't realise that not everyone can read Word files. Add all these WordPerfect users into the mix, and file format compatibility becomes something people want. Supply-and-demand follows, and such entities as Microsoft will have to offer options for their customers [gasp! MS forced to do what their customers want?? Is the world coming to an end??].

  4. Who *needs* MS Office ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who needs all the extra features of MS Office anyway? the great majority of home PC users (and some offices also) don't even use any of the advanced only-in-MS-Office features. All people need is a simple word processor with simple features such as spell checking, printing, changing fonts and colours and inserting images. Hell adding a spelling checker and a bit more to WordPad would have been enough for daily use.

    Then there is the spreadsheet. Again, same trend applies here. Who has seen anyone at home actually use VB scripts or insert OLE objects to do weird stuff with Excel ? Not the majority I can tell you.

    Just include a simple usefull wordprocessor and spreadsheet and you are set. Who needs MS Office?

  5. Where are the reviews? by BrookHarty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have not seen any good office suite reviews in a LONG time. The last was MS Office 2000 vs. Corel 2000 over at cnet.

    Anyone know if there are any reviews with the massive amount of suites. Koffice, open office, star office, ms office, ms works, corel office, applix, easy office, lotus smartsuite, siag office, axene, newdeal, 602Pro, etc..

    -
    I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know. - Garry Shandling

  6. Let's see what happens by tmark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Regardless of whether people here do or don't , most of the people who are buying Gateway-type computers LIKE the Microsoft suite of products. Most of these people, politics aside and given a choice, would take Word any day over WordPerfect and would take Excel any day over 1-2-3. That's the reality of the marketplace that MS Office dominates - in fact, it's the very reflection of MS Office dominance.

    So what this means is that the Gateway PC is going to have to be cheaper - when you factor in the lost MS Office - then competitors. What's it worth having MS Office vs Corel's suite ? $100 ? $200 ? Whatever number you come up with, that's how much the Gateway is going to need to be cheaper (assuming an otherwise equivalent feature set).

    If Gateway's PC is not cheaper on a feature-adjusted basis, then people are going to buy their PCs from Dell, or IBM, or HPQ, or whomever. LOTS of companies have been substituting other office suites in the past, and they did NOTHING to threaten MS hegemony, let alone provide a modicum of competition. IBM did it with their line of PCs years ago, bundling WordPro and 1-2-3 right after their Lotus acquisition and when MS Office was not nearly as dominant as it is now, and I'm sure their sales were hurt as a result. Now WordPro is history while MS Word rolls on.

    This isn't news, it's just Gateway trying to cut their costs.

  7. Re:Oh.. the pressure! by Pxtl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Idunno, I'm still mad at MS for egotistically naming their proprietary document filetype *.doc, which was already being used for general text files, thus meaning that every freaking old doc file I open that's plain text launches in Word and I have to wait all that time for their slow-ass program to boot.