Microsoft's Battle For Software Mindshare

chemicaloli writes to mention a BBC article about Microsoft's battle to convince users they need to buy new software. The article explores the changes to the UI in Microsoft Office 2007. Along with the changes prompted by the adoption of the 'Ribbon', the article also looks at some of the software's new features. From the article: "'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is launched. 'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 — the software doesn't really expire,' said Mr Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division. Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change."

Comments

Lab Rats

[MECC]

The firm also undertook hundreds of thousands of hours of lab research

I had no idea those little white rats liked using Word. . .

Re:Lab Rats

[Sqwubbsy]

They didn't.
That's why they died.

Curiously, the ones using Project determined which other mice would die.

Re:Lab Rats

[BJH]

Yeah, except half the time they killed too many mice and the other half of the time they killed too few.

Hey, it all balanced out in the end, so I guess the project was a success!

Re:Lab Rats

[Anonymous Coward]

They prefer OpenCages 2.0. It's "free" as in "free".

Re:Lab Rats

[Bemopolis]

What, you thought lawyers used OpenOffice?

Bemopolis

Re:Lab Rats

[Malfourmed]

Of course they like Word.

They're Microsoft Mice.

Re:Lab Rats

[nametaken]

I've never been a big fan of animal cruelty.

Re:Lab Rats

[ewl1217]

They're Microsoft Mice.

They're Genuine Microsoft Mice.

convince them the old isn't good enough?

[yagu]

Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

This may be a bigger shift for Microsoft than the internet was, retooling the way they think about business as a service and value-added support company rather than a company trotting out latest and greatest generations of (already quite mature) software (sheeesh, how many more features can you conceive for today's word processors?). And, have you looked at the new interfaces for their "got to have" Office products? Maybe good, maybe not, but who in their right corporate business mind would foist yet another learning curve on their entire company for yet another interface?

Considering Microsoft has never really cared for the rest of the world (in my opinion), their entire corporate mentality must reverse field, not something I'm sure they're even capable of... consider the latest rantings by Ballmer about a peek under the Microsoft covers about why they really forged the Suse/Linux deal. More evidence Microsoft continues to be about controlling, not collaborating. Does Microsoft even have the personnel capable of shifting their mindset? Time will tell.

Microsoft's stranglehold on the economy may be loosening as technology, distribution of technology, and support for technology become more about the people. That (in my opinion) can be only a good thing for the world.

(an interesting aside... my editor spellchecker offered Blamer as an alternative spelling for Ballmer... snicker.)

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[geoff lane]

It's really no different to washing power. Every 6 months washing powder is "NEW AND IMPROVED" and can whiten your whites beyond white... just like they claimed last year.

It's the same old 10% active ingredient and 90% inert filler.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[tritonman]

if anyone has a "stranglehold" on our economy, it's the oil companies, not microsoft. At least there is some competition in their world.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[sBox]

At the past two companies I've worked for, we've found that OfficeXP has a good enough feature set for our users. Office2K was buggy and crashed, Office2K3 was an added expense for features we didn't even need with XP. About the only reason to upgrade would be for security patches or if you are in an audited environment, which most small and medium size companies are not. Outside of an audited environment, the only way I can see an upgrade is to foist an interface change on Office and sell it via the channel. Once a home user gets used to that, they'll start clamoring for it at work. And we all know what happens when a CEO sees a nifty trinket.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Jarlsberg]

Well, it's not quite the same, is it? You can't readily use the same old can of washing powder week after week.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[ThomsonsPier]

Unfortunately for Microsoft, software isn't a consumable like washing powder. Unless you bought a lifetime's supply of Daz, you're going to have to buy the new formula when you run out.

The problem with trying to convince people that the old software isn't good enough is that, for most people, it is. The average user doesn't do anything with MSWord other than type. The only people who would appreciate the 'improvements' offered here are those who are already using OpenOffice.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Zangief]

Whiter than white? Like #GGGGGG?

(old joke, I know).

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[fotbr]

Not entirely true.

There are those that are in windows-only shops with a very strict IT policy that would like the features, but are not ALLOWED to use OpenOffice.

And then there are those, like me, that actually prefer MS Office over OpenOffice -- especially the new interface.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[doughrama]

Washing detergent that's "new and improved" is not meant to necessarily to "sell" the consumer on the product. Though it's an added bonus.

Companies that produce the staples, soap, razors, etc... Have to play games with their products to keep their prices reasonable (profitable.) For example, Walmart expect that you will lower the price of your product by x percentage every six months to a year. And with Walmart, you will, or they will drop your product and go with a company that will reduce their prices. Which is one of the ways Walmart destroy's companies, but that's a different topic.

So to skirt the Walmart price lowing policy, you simply come out with a new product. Just look at razors and razor blades they are the great example.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Moby Cock]

His CIO tells him to shut up and go golfing?

;)

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[A beautiful mind]

Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

I feel I need to add, that in most businesses selling a product provides customer satisfaction. However, such is the case with monopolies, that providing customer satisfaction is no longer a requirement, or a much less fulfilled requirement.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[smilindog2000]

Upgrading Office isn't about getting new features. It's about being able to read the new .doc and .ppt files that you get from other companies in your e-mail. I use Open Office for this, thus breaking the endless cycle of unneeded upgrades. However, I have to deal with font-mismatches, and occasional glitches, like embedded Visual Basic macros that don't work. I haven't seen a really innovative feature in Word/Power Point/Excel in years. There was nothing wrong with Office 97.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[A beautiful mind]

And then there are those, like me, that actually prefer MS Office over OpenOffice -- especially the new interface.

Oh... I think I've seen a term for that somewhere...

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[morgan_greywolf]

Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

And it's the same thing that causes a lukewarm PC market. You only need the new PCs if you need the new software. You only need the new software if it has something the old software didn't have that you need. Except that Microsoft Office has progressed to the point where the new features don't matter to anyone. Office XP is good enough for most users. OpenOffice.org has some room for improvement (mostly because it is a much less mature product), but is also good enough for enough people that it's taken a foothold.

The combination of this and the fact that operating systems and operating systems are quickly becoming commodity products gives Microsoft as limited a shelf life as IBM had when they came out with the PS/2. I give it 5-7 before Microsoft has we know it becomes irrelevant. Maybe they'll reinvent themselves. But it won't be through subscription software, something corporates and end-users have already shown a distaste for.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Qzukk]

You can't readily use the same old can of washing powder week after week.

I don't really want my whites white beyond white, that's kind of hard on the eyes, so I just take a few specks of dust from the can every week when I wash my laundry. It's lasted me 8 years so far!

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[morgan_greywolf]

change the first instance of 'operating systems' to 'office suites'. Damned preview button...

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for Microsoft, software isn't a consumable like washing powder.

Precisely, which is why the Trusted Computing Group was started with Microsoft as a founder member, along with Intel. To put hardware in every PC that allows software and data to be a) sparse (cannot be copied) b) forced to expire. Including, I might add, taking Free software and signing the binaries to prevent you from modifying the code and still running it... effectively making their version of your code proprietary.

The group now also contains all the major technology companies, including AMD, VIA and such FOSS luminaries as IBM and Sun. Lovely thought.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

(overheard in the TOP SECRET Microsoft Office software core labs....)

Hey, I was just reading slashdot, and they said "Unfortunately for Microsoft, software isn't a consumable...", well I just got an Idea.. we can just add a new value in the registry hive for office, "Time to start decay", after that date office will start to um decay.

(um for the humor impaired this is a JOKE)
(posted anonymously becase Microsoft is most likly humor impaired)

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[alexhs]

Whiter than white? Like #GGGGGG?

(old joke, I know).


From an old Slashdoter, I guess :P We're in a 64-bit era ! It would be #GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG now !

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[owlnation]

It's really no different to washing power.

Yes, but they haven't gone full circle like the Washing Powder people yet. By adding lots of whiteners they created the new and improved varieties of Washing Powder. These washed whiter than Brand X. However, if you take your now redundant whiteners free Brand X and remarket it as Washing Powder for colors... then you go full circle and sell twice. Which is exactly what the Proctor and Gamble's did.

So why not with software? Microsoft Bob... you know, for kids!

Or Better - MS Superfast Word-Lite - essentially Word 2 in new chrome. Now that I might even buy...

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Mr_Silver]

Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model. Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

To be fair, this is the business model that applies to more that just Microsoft and more than just the software industry.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[4of12]

I agree there's a logical inconsistency when
old_version = current_version;
current_version++;
happens.

Fortunately for Microsoft, most consumers are so jaded by the onslaught of advertisement they're more than happy to forget that Windows 95 is the Best Operating System Ever.

However, more difficult than overcoming the "this version is better" switcheroo is, IMHO, the "my version is Good Enough©".

Good Enough© has won contests against worthy contenders such as "New and Improved" and "Technologically Superior" and "Long Term Best Interest". Indeed, Microsoft owes much of its own success against its competitors by providing a Good Enough solution that has become hard to avoid. OS2 anyone?

The essential means for pushing past Good Enough for MSFT is to get pre-installed new versions of software on shiny new laptops used by upper management sending post-modern incompatible file formats down to the masses of worker bees in Corportorporia where enough discomfort will be enough to dislogdge them from Good Enough.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[smallpaul]

Upgrading Office isn't about getting new features. It's about being able to read the new .doc and .ppt files that you get from other companies in your e-mail.

Microsoft has gone out of its way to provide file format compatibility from Office 2000 through 2007: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924074 .

People who complain about Microsoft's constant backwards-incompatible file format changes tend to be people who haven't used office seriously in a decade. Look around this thread. You'll find many people who have been using Office 2000 for 6 years with few compatibility problems. I know that I frequently pass files between Office 2000 at home and Office XP at work with no problems.

In the last decade, Microsoft has incremented its file format at roughly the same rate as OpenOffice/StarOffice. They've provided plugins to allow older versions to work. When they've incremented, the new file formats are better than the old ones in almost every conceivable way. The 2007 file formats are more reliable, more open and more feature rich.

I'm in NO SENSE a Microsoft advocate, and in fact am switching my computers to Mac. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to let BS go unchallenged. Truth is truth.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Weedlekin]

"each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product. This is the classical Microsoft business model."

It's actually a classical monopoly business model where company's only competition is prior versions of its own products, and customers are told what they can have instead of being sold something they actually want. It tends to work excellently in the long term when one is selling consumables that provide a constant revenue stream, but can be more difficult with other things, because a monopoly is by its nature serving a largely saturated market that offers little if any opportunities for growth. This is why MS are eager to convert software into a consumable that is paid for by constant usage micro-charges instead of a bigger one-off payment, thereby eliminating all those users who see no compelling reason to upgrade Office-97 or Office-2K (there are a surprisingly large number of these).

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[rucs_hack]

"Therein lies Microsoft's problem -- each new iteration of their software all of a sudden must render their older generation software "not good enough", giving the lie to all earlier claims about previous generations of product."

Much as I hate to be in any way seen to be siding with microsoft, that's *every* closed source vendors way of doing things, not just microsofts.

Open source people do it to, it's just that since we don't have to charge for our products, we just say 'go grab the new stuff, it's much better', and we don't need to bad mouth our old stuff to get people to change. Or if it was shit, we can say so without looking bad. Not quite the same, but I for one would hate to see someone using an older version of my program when I've worked so hard on the new one.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[misleb]

It is a lot different. Laundry soap runs out weekly (well, maybe more like monthly). People buy new laundry soap often and companies use "new and improved" to get just a little edge over the 10 other brands sitting on the shelf. Microsoft is just about the only brand on the Office suite shelf and nobody really has to buy a new copy every fixed period of time. For many people, Office 97, or even 95, still works just fine. Question is, will Vista require people to upgrade from older (than 2003) Office versions? I think THAT would be the biggest source of new sales.

-matthew

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[gEvil (beta)]

There are instances of backwards compatibility issues, even though Microsoft claims the file formats are the same. I recently received a Word document from someone that had a table that spanned 5 pages. The first page appeared fine, but the table was then truncated on pages 2 through 5. Essentially, it ran off the bottom of the page and started on the next page further down the table than it should have (ex, page 1:a,b,c,d; page 2:e,f,g,h [table cells running off the bottom of the page]; page 3:k,l,m,n [runs off bottom]; page 4:r,s,t,u etc). Both Office 2000 and OpenOffice exhibited this behavior. The only thing that would open it properly was the Word 2003 60-day demo from Microsoft's site. Thankfully, I was able to use that in a VM to do what I needed to do to the file.

So while you may not have encountered issues, they do exist and there are people out there who have had to deal with them.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Andrewkov]

This is why they change protocols and binary formats. If you can't open an Excel doc from your customer since he has a newer version, you are forced to upgrade. Plus they stop giving updates for older software. These are the 2 main ways MS has historically forced people to buy new software every few years.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[pizzach]

I suppose so. But a lot of open source projects when they get enough features, they actually become stagnant.

I also get he feeling that Microsoft is starting to beat a dead horse for upgrades. It's starting to become like trying to do something that wasn't in a simpsons episode.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a artard. 97' sucked donkey balls. You couldn't even open database files multiple times, there was a lock and the database was JET.

Please do your research before making stupid statements.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[rucs_hack]

their business model works perfectly in a world without competition. That world no longer exists, even though they are doing their best to bring it back (reference all this novell patent crap). Thus we have this hard work to get people to upgrade, because alternatives do exists.

Even if people don't buy the alternatives, the fact that those alternatives don't have such a steep forced upgrade path is enough to give them pause.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[ConceptJunkie]

It's the same old 10% active ingredient and 90% inert filler.

The hasn't been true for quite a few years. I don't know if you've noticed, but the washing powder companies have finally realized that reducing waste and excessive packaging and most products are significantly (2, 3 or 4x or more) more concentrated than they were 10-20 years ago.

Otherwise I agree with you and as far as I'm concerned, Word stopped improving about 10 years ago. Right now it's a huge, bloated, horribly buggy, (at least on OSX) and confusing mess.

I realized I could double my productivity by using OOo, but I could double or triple it again by using Restructured Text.

WYSIWYG Word processing is a dead-end. Markup is where the real power lies.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea that most users need to upgrade because the latest thing is so much improved is ridiculous. Most users don't care and are content to use what they have. I have yet to see another user in my office deliberately change the default toolbar setup even though they do not use most of the features there. Occasionally they accidentally remove a toolbar at which point they do without. They use simple formatting in spreadsheets and documents and are not looking for any added features. I suspect this is the case for the vast majority of Office users. Most of them would still be happily using Lotus for DOS if they hadn't been forced to upgrade years ago.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[gramji]

I agree with you. I do prefer MS Office 2007 over OpenOffice and MS Office 2003 purely from productivity point of view. I find myself moving my cursor much less and spending more time with keyboard shortcuts with MS Office 2007 than the others, which for me is a big selling point. But I guess the question then is how much am I willing to pay for it when OpenOffice does 80-90% of what the MS version does. I honestly don't know - never calculated it.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm not a microsoft advocate.

I have had several microsoft documents over the last six years that I could *not* open with microsoft until I first opened them with openoffice and saved them as word documents. Something was wrong with them and word couldn't partially read them.

I also use open office to shrink word documents- on average about 2 MEGABYTES each (wtf?). Merely by opening and saving them.

I have two word documents that OO can't open which open correctly in microsoft. Each is about 10 megabytes and has roughly 150 graphics in each (two 150 page books I've created). It opens them mangled and then crashes while editing. In OO 1.0.3 it couldn't even open them- so progress is being made.

I've bugged OO for it's inability to cut and paste rectangular sections for about 2 YEARS now and it's still not fixed. This is a feature I still use word and textpad for.

Word has no new features that I need- much less that I need and will pay $495 for. OTH, I get a corporate deal-- current version of word for $20. At $20, it's not a bad deal.

However, with the DRM crap they are starting to put into it- and the possibility that Vista may belly up on me and lock all my data- I'll be moving to linux (ubuntu) as of Vista for all my important documents.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Bruce Cran]

If all you want to do is read documents created in Microsoft Office applications, you can download the free viewer software that Microsoft makes available. For example, the Word 2003 viewer can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displa ylang=en. A list of available viewers is available at http://www.microsoft.com/office/000/viewers.asp

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[leanweb]

how is that a problem? isnt that a healthy driver to keep innovating?

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[aaronl]

MS claims a lot of other things that aren't true, too. The truth is that Office formats are *mostly* compatible between versions. There are parser differences that cause Office products to fail to read complex documents between versions on occasion. I have trouble reading documents from Office2003 in Office2000 suite products. I have infrequent problems reading Office97 files in Office2000, and have frequent trouble reading Office98 (Mac) files on Office2000.

People that seriously use Office frequently see compatibility problems. It's the occasional users, like you, that don't see the issues.

FWIW, the filters that MS has sponsered for OpenDocument are terrible, and I can't use OfficeML because most people can't read it without downloading additional software. Besides, if I'm going to consider switching products from Office2000/DOC to Office2007/XML, I might as well save 500$/person and just switch to OpenOffice/OpenDocument.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[electroniceric]

You hit the nail on the head. Not only is it a question of convincing people to want the new product, it's convincing anyone who's made Office a platform to change platforms. I wrote a system for my company in Access (see side note below), which we'll use until a year and change from now when it will re-architected in Java as we grow. All the users are running Office 2003 right now, and I grit my teeth and pay the $400 Microsoft tax on every new workstation for a bunch of features we rarely use and a few key ones we do. In an effort to push Office 2007, however, Microsoft has told all it's VARs not to sell volume licenses of Office 2003 anymore. So I'm stuck buying up old OEM licenses, which really sucks from a maintenance and license management perspective. So not only do I have no interest in a new UI for the same old word processor, but I'm being squeezed by a vendor who's attempting to bully me into buying a product that breaks my platform. Call me a Linux fanboy, but that kind of crap really makes me hate Microsoft and any other vendor trying to put the squeeze on my freedom to assemble a platform that fits my needs and budget. The lab software market is full of that approach, and many people using lab software hate those bastards, too. One of the best parts of the maturation of open source is that it has helped bring power back to the buyers, whatever combination of open source and proprietary licenses we mix.

An aside about Access. It's really a rather good RAD tool for whipping up quick, useful client-server database applications. Access' "continuous forms" view and its reporting are top notch UI building blocks, and cost quite a bit of cheddar to buy or build equivalents in .NET. If Microsoft were more comfortable with the value-add chain, they could open a pretty big migration path from Access upward. Basically, trash Access' stupid everything-in-one-file binary format in favor of creating text source code files and compile to .NET executables in your language of choice. Then you get all the utility of Access' default data bindings and event handlers but in a format that you could fairly well convert into a mid-size client-server app that you could probably build and test. Instead they have left Access stuck executing VBA that's compiled inside the big munged binary file, and totally inaccessible by any decent test tools. My interpretation is that they're trying to keep people who do use buying licenses for Office Pro. That works, but it leaves you shopping elsewhere when your app outgrows Access. If they incrementalized the value you got, people like me would be distinctly more interested in them in the long run.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Gilmoure]

Naw, Word 5.1a. Best version of Word, eveh! Will be bummed when I move to Intel Macs and can't run it any more.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[Monchanger]

Microsoft has gone out of its way to provide file format compatibility from Office 2000 through 2007

Out of its way? That's a really stupid thing to say. If the new version didn't let you open old documents, no company would ever buy a new version and have to live with losing all their documents. And on the other hand, if new documents required the new version, it would make it harder for companies with the new version to share with others. Both demonstrate a clear loss in sales if Microsoft doesn't provide compatibility, so they're hardly doing something they don't want to do.

Besides, if Microsoft actually designed a decent forward-looking file format, the task wouldn't be as difficult as you proclaim (yet provide no proof) it to be.

And as I'm sure many people have already posted hundreds of times, most people have little to no use for subsequent versions of Office. I can't tell the non-cosmetic differences between 97, 2000 and 2003, despite using them all- there's a set number of functions most people use (and I use way more than most). I could use a more stable version (and they have been getting better at not crashing), but that's it. I can use the current version for another ten years and won't miss any of these "new features". This "ribbon" thing sounds like just more eye-candy, just as Vista does in every interview of a Microsoft exec I've read so far. I don't want eye-candy- I want to not need to buy a new computer every few years to do the same work.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[msobkow]

Microsoft is about selling a product, not providing customer satisfaction.

If Microsoft were about selling product, then there would not be the perpetual push for cascading upgrades of the entire Microsoft line. The product sold, they'd be content. But noooooo, they want you to pay repeatedly for the same "product".

But neither their product upgrades nor their service packs and updates fix the issues on the defect lists for the previous release. Instead we get fed some pablum that a survey group found a new way of screwing things up better than the old way of screwing things up, so we get a UI that lets you screw up all kinds of ways instead of fixing fundamental bugs.

In exchange, you get to buy more memory, a faster CPU, and upgrade a whole boatload of other software that now proves incompatible with the MS suite upgrades you installed.

*Heavy Exasperated Sigh*

Inevitably you run into it. The critical package whose vendor is null, void, and gone. No upgrades. No patches. No enhancements.

And it won't run with the latest "updates".

Look at it this way. A company that has been around for a couple decades using Microsoft Word has now paid for Word 1..n, 95, 98, 2000, 2Kn, and XP. $300-500 for the first go-round, and $150-300 for at least five upgrades.

Is your word processor worth $1050-2000?!?!?!?!

Oh, yes, but wait! There are the OS Upgrades as well. Win 3.1, WFW, Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2K, WinXP. Let's just ballpark those at $150 each. Another $1050.

Is your glorified typewriter worth $2100-3050?!?!?!

Now imagine an office that has loyally purchased the entire suite of Microsoft servers and tools.

I fail to see any significant saving over the "bad old days" of centralized computing, other than the drop in hardware costs. And there is still someone trying to tell me what I can and cannot do with the machine, only now it's not the admin who works with me -- it's some third party in Washington that doesn't even know who I am except as a license validation string.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[fotbr]

Oh, you tried to make a funny, how cute. Except you're thinking of Masochism, which is pleasure from recieving pain, not sadomasochism, being an activity between two (usually consenting, though there are some extremists you usually end up reading about in the news) adults that combines sadism (pleasure from giving pain) and masochism.

Considering the ideas behind the interface ("toolstrips" that change based on what mode you're in) have been in use elsewhere (Alias|Wavefront's Maya, for instance) and its not the "normal" method of hiding hundreds (thousands?) of options under a half-dozen root menus, I say its an improvement.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[chris_7d0h]

Nearly as important is the fact that the support contract forces me to upgrade or else Microsoft won't give me support.

Windows 2000 was perfectly fine for me but seeing as it was retired last year I had to move to XP (couldn't afford the extended support contract. Cheaper just getting XP licenses).

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[orin]

So, given that you are using OO.o and have broken the "cycle of upgrades", does this mean that you will not upgrade your current version of OO.o when a new version is released in future? Or are you happy to keep upgrading OO.o to the latest and greatest, switching one treadmill for another?

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[matuscak]

"Microsoft has told all it's VARs not to sell volume licenses of Office 2003" It's been several months since I went through the pain of attempting to decode the "Open License" minutia, so this may have changed, but all of the programs include the right to run previous versions, i.e. buy a MOLP licenses for Office 2007, and legally run Office XP. From a quick search, it looks to still be the case, see: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/A/A/7AA89 A8B-BF4D-446B-A50C-C9B00024DF33/open_license_progr amguide.pdf They call it "Downgrade Rights"

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[SixAndFiftyThree]

Ekh, that's the business model General Motors is credited with pioneering some decades ago. Back then GM had something like 60% market share. Now they have 25% if they're lucky. Those who won't learn from history ....

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[gonzoxl5]

I thought upgrading office was more about continuing to receive support.

No enterprise can allow itself to be running an out of support Microsoft product on its desktops or its servers.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[richlv]

well, sado- part probably comes from the fact that you consciously or unconsciously want to make others use it, too ;)
as for auto hide/show part - oo.org 1.x used that paradigm in several places, more than 2.0.
the functionality was removed/replaced because supposedly tests told that people were not comfortable with using them (and to be more mso-like...).
i kinda liked them, but only after i had grasped the concept and worked with them for a while.

Re:convince them the old isn't good enough?

[fotbr]

Actually, Open Office is compatabile enough with MS Office that I don't really care what other people use. Hell, use emacs or vi or vim or notepad or editplus or anything else, as long as it works for you, its all good.

I didn't use Open Office 1.x, so I can't say anything about what was or wasn't there. I just am not impressed with 2.0, when a) I already have MS Office, and b) I get MS Office as part of the MSDN subscription that work is paying for, so the "cost savings" is a non-issue for me. I'll admit that my preference might be different if I was forking over $400+ for each version of office, but then again I'd probably fork the money over once, and then not upgrade for a long time, which is kind of the point of the article.

Why upgrade?

[Karzz1]

"Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change."

So, is this an admission by MS that there really is no compelling reason for an upgrade? What I mean is, if someone has to be persuaded to buy it, what is the reason they would need/want it?

Re:Why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

" if someone has to be persuaded to buy it, what is the reason they would need/want it?"

Whatever reason sales is using to persuade them with. Do you think they just walk in and beg for them to upgrade? They identify needs within an organization and use the new features of the product that would resolve those needs.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Jekler]

The need to compel people to adopt a solution is not, in itself, an argument that the solution is unnecessary. Applying game theory, even given a dominant strategy consumers may actually choose the weaker strategy because they lack the cognitive level required to understand which strategy is better.

Many consumers will choose what is familiar over what is better, even given a clear-cut advantage. For example, many dial-up users will refuse to switch to a broadband connection, even if the offer has all of the following properties:

• Equal or lesser price
• Equal or greater reliability/uptime
• More bandwidth
• Less latency

This type of decision making can also be observed in solar panel sales. A consumer who can afford a $25,000 solar panel setup and has the government offer a $25,000 subsidy (effectively paying $0 for a lifetime reduction of 80% of their energy bill), will still not have it installed. This behavior is a result of 3 related fallacies. The "Burden of Proof", "Appeal to Tradition", and "Fallacy of Pride".

Burden of Proof - It is much harder for Microsoft to prove Office 97 is inferior to Office 2007 than it is for a user of Office 97 to prove Office 2007 doesn't meet their needs as effectively as Office 97 does. This is because Microsoft does not know the needs of the user in question, only the user does, and therefore the burden of proof is on the person making the assessment.

Appeal to Tradition fallacy - This is what I've always had and it has always worked for me, therefore it must be the dominant strategy.

Fallacy of Pride - People want to believe the initial choice they made was intelligent. Changing strategies would imply that their previous choice was not intelligent. Therefore, the intelligent choice is to not change strategies.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change.

The same reason they have always had before. When we (big company) move to Office 2007, you (little company) will either be able to read the documents we send you or we will do business with another little company who will. You have no choice in the matter. Prepare to be assimilated (again).

Re:Why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would'a thunk their "Seal Hunter" sales approach (club the slow ones like they were baby seals and take their money) amd the new protection racket would be proven inadequate? Maybe it's time to short-sell 'em.

Re:Why upgrade?

[CodeMasterPhilzar]

Beats me, Open Office 2.0 on Linux does everything I want/need...

I think there is real trouble ahead for MS. Yesterday I was in a local Barnes & Noble bookstore and drifted into the computer book section. (grin, yeah, like that's news) What is noteworthy however is that there is more shelf space devoted to Linux books than there is to Windows books. That was an eye-opener for me.

For about $40 - $50 I could've walked out with any one of several complete distros on DVD including office apps, pointers to where to get just about anything else I might have wanted, and a book/tutorial on how to set it all up. If I were MS, that would scare the h*ll out of me.

The real question is not just why would anyone upgrade from XP to Vista and the new Office apps... But why would anyone spend literally hundreds of dollars upgrading their hardware and software when there is a much cheaper alternative? Sure, I'm stuck keeping one Windows box around for a couple of things that are windows only. (eg. my GPS map software) But otherwise, MS has nothing I want/need.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

interesting thought process, but i want to challenge it.

1. you assume that msft knows that something is "better" for the user that doesn't want to upgrade. this is a false assumption.
2. your view assumes that "good enough" doesn't exist.
3. free solar panels don't exist, do they (subsidy or otherwise). so why use something that doesn't exist as a hypothetical example - does a real on not exist?
4. as for broadband, i think you apply the fallacy of extraction - just b/c the hermit down the street rejected broadband doesn't mean lots of folks do. in fact, the average person goes for broadband, whether they can afford it or not!

having said that, there is some truth to what you say, but you've misapplied an outlier case and tried to make it the average reaction.

i know better what *i* need than msft does.
"good enough" does, in fact exist, which is why msft tries to break formats to *force* upgrades.
i'm waiting for the free solar panel information... do share...
i have broadband, but i'm open to faster broadband... so tell me where i get faster and cheaper, alrighty?

having said that, i think you hit the nose on the head why more folks don't go with linux on the desktop, though. that and msft working very hard to prevent interoperability.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Jekler]

In response to your 3rd point, I did not use an example that does not exist.

Connecticut offers up to $25,000 tax rebate for the cost of installing solar panels.

Until January 1st 2006, some areas of California offered up to $15,000 rebates + 7.5% of the installed system.

Those tax rebates were/are in addition to the $2,000 federal tax rebate, and in addition to property tax exemptions on the cost of the system.

Aside from government subsidies for solar panels, there are private firms that offer additional incentives if there is any remaining cost.

Problem

[BCW2]

A business survey a few years ago (3?) showed that over 60% of businesses were still running Win 2K and had NO plans to switch to XP. This is an ongoing problem for M$. More and more businesses are taking the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" approach to software. Cost control is the most important thing and if what they have does what they need they will not spend a nickle for the sake of change. There is no compelling reason to go through the constant upgrade cycle just to help M$ bottom line. This seems to be true for businesses of any size.

Re:Problem

[Dunbal]

More and more businesses are taking the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" approach to software.

      I can't wait until some brilliant marketing person comes up with a plan to "break" the software through a service pack/worm or whatever. Then they'll switch you to a yearly lease for the upgrade, to keep the income stream flowing.

Re:Problem

[Moby Cock]

Office 2007 offers a new wrinkle in MS software. They have changed the GUI for all the apps. This is going to require some re-training. Unless there are clear must-have features in Office 2007, there is a real reason to NOT switch.

OOo may get a few nmore users out of this.

Re:Problem

[Dan Ost]

If someone did that and it was provable, then there would be one hell of a class action suit.

Re:Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They have changed the GUI for all the apps. This is going to require some re-training.

If you hunt around office.microsoft.com you'll find MS supply training videos to introduce the new UI to old users. So they're taking care of that for you.

It's pretty easy, actually, anyway - it didn't take me long at all to switch. Word 2007 even supports all the old 2003 keyboard commands too.

Re:Problem

[sci50514]

I agree. I work in a small company and we standardize on Win2K. It is stable enough and works. There is nothing compelling about XP and Vista upgrade. The best thing is there ain't' the annoying product activation.

Re:Problem

[NSIM]

I'm sure that several years ago, many enterprises were still using W2K, they rarely switch OS on desktop hardware, so if they were like most companies and did a major round of hardware upgrades in the late 90s/early 2Ks they would not deploy XP until the next desktop hardware refresh. Same is true for Vista, it's not a question of them not wanting XP or Vista, simply that they replace hardware on a cycle, and get whatever OS is current at that point.

I'll make this prediction now, that by mid-08 Vista will be more than 50% of market and upwards of 90% by '09 because that's how long the hardware refresh will take.

Re:Problem

[doj8]

Many enterprises erase whatever is on the new computer just purchased and replace it with their standardized image. So, the system might officially have had Vista on it, but it may well be running Windows 2000.

Those systems would be counted as being Vista, in the marketing figures, as that was how it was sold. How it is used is irrelevant to marketing in this case.

Re:Problem

[NSIM]

Theoretically true, but given that W2K will be unsupported shortly (if it isn't already) I think it's higly unlikely that anybody will be making new hardware purchases to run W2K on.

Re:Problem

[jimbojw]

... just to help M$ bottom line.

I think you mean the top line.

Re:Problem

[Emetophobe]

I don't think Microsoft minds too much. Most new computers come preloaded with Windows XP, but a lot of businesses will format and install Windows 2000 on those systems. Microsoft ends up getting paid twice for each system.

Re:Problem

[BCW2]

Not true at all! Many businesses run custom software and are quite happy with it. They have no interest in having the software ported to a new OS and starting the debug process all over again. Some of those programs are very expensive and when the M$ tax is added, it's not worth it.

I work in a white box store and have several businesses that buy all their hardware from us because they want thier "standard image" loaded on it and Dell won't sell boxes without an OS. They will not pay for something they won't use (M$ tax). The only thing that will change this will be a lack of drivers for Win 2K. Most new hardware still has drivers that work on old OS's. If you know that they want to use thier software you select hardware that has good drivers, not that big a deal.

Re:Problem

[BCW2]

They already did with Win 3.11. The floppies failed after X# of installs, on the upgrade it was disk 2 and the full version it was disk 5. I have never heard of a set of originals that didn't have this problem.

Re:Problem

[NSIM]

But you are not talking about how the vast majority of corporates do there hardware/software purchasing. Most corporates do their purchasing from large vendors (DELL, HP etc) not small custom white box shops and do periodic hardware refreshes which tends to tie into their software upgrade cycle because that's the logical time to do an upgrade.

Software Mindshare?

[smittyoneeach]

Software Mindshare?
Should we go there?
Seek your freedom!
The GPL dare!
Burma Shave

Re:Software Mindshare?

[TheRealMindChild]

What is with these constant (and REALLY bad) attempts to turn a karma profit with these silly poems?

Re:Software Mindshare?

[Penguinisto]

Oh, c'mon... it's a pretty good improvement over the ungodly tired routine of bad car analogies, "In Soviet Russia...", and the near-constant practice of welcoming new overlords (and no, we won't even go near the hot grits, thanks much).

(insert "I for one welcome our new Burma Shave overlords" here)

/P

Re:Software Mindshare?

[jamiesan]

In Soviet Russia, the Overlords Welcome YOU?

Re:Software Mindshare?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese karma farmers (Farmas?), perhaps.

It'll be on ebay in time for Christmas!

Keep Govt Out

[tritonman]

The last thing we need is the government telling software companies how much they can change their software. "You can't make these changes because it better for users to upgrade their software"

Re:Keep Govt Out

[UnknowingFool]

The last thing we need is the government telling software companies how much they can change their software. "You can't make these changes because it better for users to upgrade their software"

I think you are referring to the OpenDocument debate. Massachusetts has never said Microsoft must change their software. They only set a standard for themselves, and any software vendors that want to do business with the state must follow standards. Governments set standards all the time.

This article is a perfect example of why Massachusetts did what it did. Suppose the state is still on Office 97. So that means all work has been saved in 97 formats. Well, Office 97 is no longer being sold. To read Office 97 formats on new computers, Massachusetts must upgrade to Office 2007. What if MS decides not to support Office 97 documents in Office 2007. Nothing prevents them from doing so. Well Massachusetts can't access their own documents then. So the state is stuck. It's no different than any other vendor lock-in.

The state has decided from now on, any future documents must be saved in open formats. It has never detailed which vendors should be used, only that the formats must be open so that in the future vendor lock-in does not occur.

Re:Keep Govt Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Change software? Upgrades? ... I thought we were talking about Microsoft.

The new advertising age

[Chemisor]

In the old times, you strived to prove to your customers how good your products were and how intelligent and talented your workers are. These days you have to show that your products are garbage, your workers are dumb and inept, and you yourself have no talent whatsoever for running the company. I suppose that is what they call "truth in advertising".

Hmmmph

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I still prefer Excel 5 to the later versions, 3d graphing was easier with that version, the rest is just marketing puff that slows me down when creating a spreadsheet.

While IT staff around the world convince otherwise

[Lumpy]

Honestly. there is ZERO reason to upgrade from even Office 2000. Outlook 2000 is 10 times faster than outlook 2003 and god help us on the mess that is outlook 2007.

Every time there is an "upgrade" in the company all of us in IT cringe.... Office incompataibility between versions is legendary (2000-2003 was a nightmare.. some images showing up backwards in documents, scripts not working and the dreaded warning on every launch has served to only numb users to real warning dialogs.)

Honestly, I can do things on windows 2000 and Office 2000 in the corperate environment that you can do on the latest and greates... but with far less expense in both hardware and software. And yes you still can keep it secure, there are apps to do that as well.

Hmmm

[finkployd]

When you need to struggle to convince people that they NEED to buy your new product, and that the old one is not good enough, perhaps the problem is with you. Or perhaps the problem is that your customers know that in 2010 Microsoft will be trashing the software they are talking up now in a pathetic attempt to get you to upgrade again.

You know, there is only so many pointless features you can cram into programs that basically replace a typewriter and calculator (with graph paper) respectively. I know very few people who need more than Office 95 had to offer.

Finkployd

Re:Hmmm

[ohearn]

The spelling and grammar checks in Word have gotten much better over the years (don't think the grammar check was even added until Office 97), but other than that not much has really changed.

I swapped from WordPerfect to Office 97 when in college because that was what most of my professors demanded. I swapped from Office 97 to Office XP simply because my wife already had a copy and that was what I had at work to make taking work home easier. I have had no reason to "upgrade" again.

There have been several occasions where I personally like the older versions of MS products better than the new version. Money was one of them (my wife likes it, personally I always did budgets in a simple speadsheet). The newer versions of money want to store your information on the web instead of on the local hard drive by default, constantly wants to connect to a MS server, and had more bugs than the older version. Even the wife swapped back to the old version pretty quickly, but it messed up the data files so badly in the process that we had to just scrap everything and start over.

IE7 is almost in the same category for me. I appreciate the attempts at better security, but thought the previous layout was much better. Sorry guys at work IE is the only option I have.

Re:Hmmm

[LWATCDR]

This is a problem with all software.
Software just doesn't wear out. It is not like manufactured goods. You don't have to replace it every few years.
That is one area that games have an advantage. You get tired of a game so eventually you want a new one.
Eventually the market will reach a saturation point. Everybody that needs a certain program will have it. Word 2000 is good enough. Word 2003 is good enough. Heck for a lot of people OpenOffice is good enough.
The software industry is praying that the Intel ISA and or Windows will reach the end of it's life. When that happens we get to sell new software all over again.
Until then life is going to get hard for software companies unless they can convince people to start renting software.

Doesn't really expire...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire,'

...Yet.

Re:Doesn't really expire...

[H8X55]

Actually, I was thinking the same thing. How much longer before their license subscription service offered to big businesses is their business model for home users as well. Pay $399 USD for 36 months of Office, and get upgrades from free. Month 37? Oh, that's another $399 licensing fee.

I've been using Office since '95, was very pleased with Office 2K, Office XP (2001? 2002?) wasn't bad. Office 2K3 is a little bloated for my taste, but the point is, I'd rather keep using 2K for FREE than pay the MicrosoftMonster a couple hundred bucks. When I can't use 2K anymore, I'll switch to Open Office.

Re:Doesn't really expire...

[dreez]

You are soooo right ! Eventually that is what MS wants, rent the software so you are forced to upgrade, or perhaps even not upgrade, but pay again and again to use your good old office !!

No upgrade needed

[End Program]

Maybe the problem is that older products ARE good enough. Honestly, what must-have features has Microsoft added to MS Office lately?

Re:No upgrade needed

[oliderid]

Your question:
"Honestly, what must-have features has Microsoft added to MS Office lately?"

Anwser:
Incompatible formats with previous versions.

Re:No upgrade needed

[PetieG]

IMHO i'd say the *only* worthwhile upgrade (if you're using Exchange 2003) is RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003 -- that's it. No VPN necessary. Only if you're interested in the add'l offline sync's of tasks and notes. otherwise WebDav works just fine.

Re:No upgrade needed

[UnknowingFool]

Honestly, what must-have features has Microsoft added to MS Office lately?

Simple, enhanced Clippy, a.k.a. Clippy eXXtreme.

A problem for hardware companies too

[cucucu]

Hardware companies compete with their own products too.
I once worked with a company that was getting increasing competition from their own hardware being sold on eBay.
They started offering discounts for returning the old hardware when upgrading. And then they destroyed the returned items.

At least the EULA does not allow you to pass the license to another licensee once you upgrade - that would be a Microsoft nightmare. Each new version would overflow the market with very cheap licenses for the previous one.

Re:A problem for hardware companies too

[Carewolf]

Well, the EULA on this point is invalid in Europe. Still most people don't buy used software. There just isn't much tradition for it.

Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to buy

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to buy. I've been running my copy for 10 years and it still does everything I need.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you have never had more than 2 GB of email in your mailbox. That breaks Outlook 2000 and 2002, but not 2003.

Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[Josh Lindenmuth]

From a sales standpoint, Microsoft is pretty smart with Office. They always make sure it's 100% backwards compitable, but add enough changes to the .doc and .xls format to ensure that a document from the new version cannot always be opened in a prior version. At the companies I've worked for, this has typically been the driving force of upgrading.

There's nothing more annoying than receiving an e-mail with a Word 2003 document and not being able to open it in Word 2000 ... after a while there's real benefit in upgrading vs. replying to hundreds of messages with "Can you please save this in an earlier version of Word, I haven't upgraded yet". As long as Microsoft can give away or sell enough O2007 copies to large corporate accounts, there will be a trickle down effect to the rest of corporate America.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[fruey]

Totally with you on that.

It seems in fact that an old document that you open with a new version remains backwards compatible, but a fresh document where editing started in the new version will not load in older versions.

Another good reason for open formats. OpenOffice, anyone?

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[bri2000]

Although it can also work the other way around. I work for a law firm and what a law firm (at least the type of law firm I work for) does is produce Word documents. Our clients and other law firms we send them to have to be able to open them (pdfs are generally not used as they're much more difficult to mark-up) so we stick with Word 2000.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[Anonymous Coward]

If older versions of MS Office would always load in the new version of MS Office, then all would be bubble gum and chocolate. Unfortunately, MS, for marketing reasons, has to fuck with the format every year, and can't keep up with all the fuckups, so nothing seems to load perfectly. Now, I am not saying that anyone else is perfect. OO.org has a terrible time with drawing objects. Just that claiming MS knows what the old formats are is overreaching.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[Josh Lindenmuth]

I'd love to use OpenOffice, but unfortunately it still can't format our stationary headers and footers correctly (also the presentation app doesn't appear to be very compatible with PowerPoint). MS Office compatibility is the largest hurdle to adoptance of OpenOffice in my opinion.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[mspohr]

That's why I use OpenOffice. It does a good job of opening documents from all versions of MS Word... even when MS Word itself is having problems.

The company I do a lot of work for recently "upgraded" from Word 97 to Word 2003. I just stayed with OpenOffice and no one was the wiser (and I didn't have problems with document compatibility that my colleagues experienced... in fact, OpenOffice helped them sort out a few incompatibilities).

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[fruey]

I'm not a fanboy, and I think the right business decision in your case is to stick with Office.

However, creating the template from scratch in a given piece of software (MS Office) and then hoping it will work elsewhere... is always fraught with problems.

If your template is in an open format (this is the most important part) like RTF or ODF, then you're much more likely to be able to change software when required. MS .DOC format is what is locking you to Office, and that's the way they want it.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[DeGem]

I have recently sat in a demo from Microsoft Canada and they were showing us why we should upgrade to O2007 and Vista.

Some interesting facts that I learned.
a) office 2007 file formats are not backwards compatible (not news)
b) The new formats are 40% smaller or 40% the size of the equivalent document in Office 2003.
c) They have moved to an "Open" standard of XML (yeah I know who's open standard)
d) There was some massive restructuring of the company for the Office tools and the OS tools divisions.
e) supposedly they did focus groups with people who had major issues with using a computer. You know those people who just don't get it. and designed the UI to help these kind of people with the Ribbon / fancy name for tool bar

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[AK Marc]

Are you sure the reason isn't that they have a document tracking server that uses a plugin to Word 2000 that they didn't want to mess with the upgrade process with? I have worked at more than one lawfirm with their servers, and they all have document tracking, never Microsoft's solution (they were all installed long before MS had a solution, and their current solution isn't sufficient for law firms). They have plugins in Word, and they are tempermental. So, once they are working, they are not touched unless necessary. Also, the state will require documents in certain formats. Since Office 2000 can be opened and created by all versions after that, they can require that format and know that users of newer software can still get by.

Re:Microsoft is smart/sneaky with Office

[Anonymous Coward]

1. use open office
2. save as .pdf to send read-only docs to client
3. for intercompany / cross-platform collaboration, try out google docs or the other ajax-based office products
4. never use / trust ms products...they are dinosaurs on the modern computing era and people are finally starting to wake up from their long comas to realize that, yes, you don't need ms for os or apps.

Future transition to subscription model?

[thesuperbigfrog]

"Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire, " said Mr Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division.

I imagine that they would like it if Office did expire--they could really suck money out of their customers if the software expired through DRM-style technology.

Business Model

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire

Well, that's awfully damned gracious of your business model, to grant us permission to continue using software that we paid for. Does your business model allow me wipe your bloatware off of my hard drive and install the OS of my choice? No? Oh, that's too bad. Well, try again next decade. Thanks for stopping by.

Your "business model" is a hold-over from the stone age, and does not have the authority to "allow" or "disallow" me to do anything. Any company/industry that forgets that deserves the fate they get from it.

Re:Business Model

[mochan_s]

Actually software resale is not allowed anymore I believe. Most sample CDs for music production does not allow you to resell their software. Of course, ebay enforces so they're as good as law in the used market.

I personally hate Word. You can tell an ugly word document a million miles away. I hate Excel since people try to make everything in Excel though the vbscript is kinda nice. Don't even get me started on Powerpoint - it's so braindead!.

There is so much potential in project and frontpage and other stuff. I haven't checked Access for a while now.

There is so much room innovation for Microsoft on Office software but Word hasn't changed since forever (except for the toolbar buttons being in higher colors) and everything else is super-static and nothing exciting happens in Office.

I'm really hoping that OpenOffice becomes huge. I used OpenOffice exclusively and if people send me .doc files I sent them back .odt documents :) After sitting through a 1000s of hours of braindead powerpoint presentations, I've thinking about contributing to Impress with some ideas I have.

Not good enough?

[chthon]

"'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is

This from the company which probably wrote the book on deploying software when it's 'good enough'.

old software not good enough? horrible argument!

[192939495969798999]

If the old software isn't good enough now, was it good enough when I bought it? Furthermore, is the new software good enough? And by what date will it no longer be good enough? I don't think any business has needs that change so much that they need a new set of office apps after a few years. In fact, if they are doing things well, why change anything at all? The only reason you "need" to stay current is because Microsoft discontinues support on the older software. If NT support continuted, for example, I am certain that various companies would have been relieved to leave older production systems as is.

The Classic Battle...

[eno2001]

...between "Doing it right" vs. "Doing just enough". I think Microsoft's "mindshare" in the software world is definitely doing well and they have little to worry about where the majority of the computing public is concerned. The typical person just wants to use a computer and be told that they are good at it. In reality, they might be good at applications, but they don't have an inkling how to use a computer. That works well for Microsoft as it means that they don't need to be "the best" in terms of well... anything. They just have to be good enough to appeal to the average user. From a technical perspective, even the average user is aware of how low grade Microsoft products are. But, those same low grade tools that are poorly designed and applied allow said user to "do stuff" that they couldn't do on other, better designed platforms (Linux and the BSDs for example).

The fact is that most people drive shitty cars day in and day out. Econoboxes abound. Even if the person is knowledgable enough to know that they could have a better driving experience in another car, many of them can't afford the cars financially. The same with the software world. The "expense" of moving to a better designed, more well thought out platform like *nix, is simply too high for most users. Sure, distros like Ubuntu have lowered the bar considerably so that the experience is a lot closer to Mac OS X than Windows, but you've still got to deal with the fact that data migration is no small task for these sorts of users. They don't honestly understand that a file icon is really a graphical representation of a file. They don't know that a file at the filesystem level is really a notation in a file system lookup table or DB that points to locations on the hard drive that have been marked by the filesystem in some fashion. They don't know that their precious photos of their dog Woofie are bits represented by magnetic impulses on what is essentially a set of spinning phonograph records. And of course the mantra, "they don't care nor should they" usually arises at this point. That's where the "doing it right" part comes in.

If things were done right in our society regarding computer technology, EVERYONE would be given basic education on the most important tools of our society so that they could deal with whatever life throws them. And that education would NOT have a heavy focus on history, but on on the actual theory behind how the technology works. For the time being we'll just limit the scope to computers and software. The basic concepts of files and directories and how they are stored on disk should be common knowledge. Boring, yes. But essential to understanding what's happening on your computer. Once the basics of a typical filesystem are understood, it would then be essential to explain how manipulation of those files occurs (copying, moving, deleting, etc...). The same applies to memory, CPU (not the box, the chip) and basic I/O. Again, all very boring stuff and lots of people are likely to tune out. But not as many as you would think... EVERYONE has tuned out in school before, but many of you have experienced the situation later in life where something that you didn't care about in school was still rattling around in that empty head and wound up being relevant. The same would happen here only more often considering how pervasive computers are today.

Finally, once you get up to the GUI level of instruction, you begin to stress the importance of abstraction since that's all the GUI really is. There are some people who are going to have a hard time with this apparently since the last time I studied this I read that only 30% of the test base of college students could understand up to seven levels of abstaction. (I don't have a link and don't remember where I read those numbers, if anyone else remembers the study as it was featured here on Slashdot, please post the link) The reason I suggest this is that in today's educational environment the majority of students who COULD understand abstraction, and

Re:The Classic Battle...

[SABME]

I used to believe this too.

I believed that all you had to do was give people the chance to learn the basics of what they were doing with a PC, the basics of what is actually happening when they open a file or copy a file, or start a program, and some magic light would go on in their heads and they'd "get it."

Then I started working in desktop support.

This was back in 1990. There was no web and no email at work (except for a few executives who used Procomm to connect at 33.6 kbps to the corporate mail server). Most companies had adopted PCs for use, but many, like mine, were still integrating them into their daily business tasks. We were experimenting with this newfangled thing called "desktop publishing," and the accounting department was debating the relative merits of Excel for Windows 3.1 vs. Lotus 123 for DOS. Some holdouts insisted on using Quattro Pro.

I was young and idealistic. I thought that the only problem most people had was lack of familiarity with these new, powerful tools. I thought a little education would fix it.

Boy was I wrong.

I gave seminars, I took time to explain what was happening every time I fixed a problem for someone. I wrote simple memos with pictures -- "How to Format A Floppy Disk" was one of my masterworks, as was "There are two kinds of hard disks -- those that have failed and those that will fail. So make backups!". For five years, I tried, and I believed I could make a difference.

I gave up and switched jobs. But I learned something from the experience.

I learned that the problem is twofold: 1.) the vast majority of the population doesn't care how a computer works and 2.) the vast majority also lacks the mentality required to understand what's happening inside a computer. I'm not saying these are unintelligent people; I'm saying there's a certain mindset that you need to understand what's happening in your computer, and you either have it or you don't. Just like some people really get off on balancing a ledger, or closing a sale. I've worked with janitors who went from not knowing how to turn the machine on to writing Macromedia Director presentations in less than a year, and I've worked with lawyers who were baffled at the complexities of saving a file to a floppy (and who never seemed to quite get the hang of it).

Call me cynical, but my conclusion is that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be, regardless of how much education people receive.

Re:The Classic Battle...

[eno2001]

Oh I agree with you as that's been my experience as well. But where I haven't changed is my desire to still reach out to the janitors who could become Macromedia producers. The problem right now is that we don't address their needs or potential and therefore create a market that supports just getting by rather than doing the best possible. This is one of the reasons MS is so successful. They count on people wanting to only do enough to get by and not strive for perfection instead. I can't work like that. I MUST strive for perfection unattainable though it may be, because along the journey I find things that are above the realm of average. I believe that we should encourage everyone and anyone to strive for that.

Re:The Classic Battle...

[gatesvp]

I think that you may be confusing Mentality with Desire. Are the "people who don't care" also the same group as the "people who lack the mentality"? In your description, they're both a "vast majority", so could it be that you're confusing the two? (unless you have two distinct "vast majorities"?)

My experience has been that people who don't care won't learn. I have yet to meet people who can't learn to use a computer, only people who don't want to learn.

Let me throw an example your way: Someone is fired losing corporate files and failing to make backups. When word gets around about someone being fired for this "backup" thing then others will start to care. You'll hear people asking about this "backup" thing and how they can avoid getting fired. I can assure that everyone would then be happy to learn the backup process. They'd be photocopying your doc and handing them around. "There are two kinds of hard disks..." they'd all be saying, now that they had an understanding of the risks.

The realization that something is important is the first step in creating the desire to learn. My example is extreme and negatively re-inforced (being fired), but the gravity is there. Without the gravity that this information is important, many people will simply read "There are two kinds of hard disks..." and then blank out. In 1990 "the vast majority" of people had no clue what "hard disk" even meant. The sentence would make no sense to them. If then sentence makes no sense and I don't need to understand it anyways, then why am I going to learn it?

All you've effectively stated is that you can't educate the unwilling and that the "vast majority" of people are unwilling to learn about computers. But that's par for the course, we knew that already.

But please don't misinterpret your results and give up. Generate an interest in the student and you'll find students who will learn.

Re:The Classic Battle...

[SABME]

>But please don't misinterpret your results and give up. Generate an interest in the student and you'll find >students who will learn.

I absolutely agree. What I discovered is that a relatively small group of people can be "students who will learn." Maybe I had an inflated opinion of my own ability to teach, or maybe I ran into the wrong group of people, but that was my daily experience working in support for 5 years at two different companies.

I left support over 11 years ago for a job in R and D; maybe things are different now. I know they're different for me, as in much better in just about every way: more money, more interesting work, better people to work with.

Interface...yeah right

[dyous87]

"One of the most compelling reasons to move to Office 2007 is the new simplified user interface, something called the Ribbon. It lets you get at far more of the power of the product."

I used office 2007 beta for sometime and let me just say the interface is nothing to be desired. It's bloated and not very well thought out at all. Nothing seems to be where it should be and like the entire Vista OS things just seem to be more complicated when they really don't need to in order to attempt to achieve a certain degree of "eye-candy" while in reality really sacrificing usability.

Microsoft just doesn't get it, or maybe they do and don't really care. Businesses certainly have no need to switch to 2007 if they are using 2003 or even 2000 for that matter. I see no benefits that it could bring about and the learning curve required to teach the new interface will only bring about a lose in time and money.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Lumpy]

Yup corporate policy limits everyone to 250meg in their email box. Gotta love that!
Honestly its a good thing to keep people from using outlook as a storage box.

old versions of software are good enough !

[unity100]

and that is, because, they are good enough !

doh.

they are already known, their quirks and strong points are known, vulnerabilities known, things to do and not to do on them known.

the office software circle havent been providing any revolutionary stuff in regard to features for a long time, so why undertake the period/downtime of adaptation to new software for its bells & whistles.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I'm upgrade happy or anything, but Outlook 2003 does offer cached mode over Outlook 2000 if you have Exchange 2003. If you have ever worked in a company with a travelling manager/salesman or whatever, it's a great feature. Other than that, not much though.
 
And yeah, the MS version of "backwards compatibility" leaves a lot to be desired. any upgrades and I usually try to make it all desktops at once.
 
Although my editor of choice in Windows is notepad.

If they really wanted every one to upgrade... ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

They could pay people a small stipend say $10-20 to upgrade...I'm sure this would be a popular program with consumers, as well
as erase their image as being gready corporate monopolists with souls the size of shriveled prunes... Oh wait, this is Microsoft,
never mind...

Frankly I still use Office V6.....

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[InsaneGeek]

I'm pretty sure he's talking about your pesonal folders off their server on your PC, over 2GB and it was known for possibly corrupting and taking all your mail but the 250MB on the server.

Old versions of software not good enough?

[OnTheWay]

Well, since I'm a forward-looking person, I think that Office 2007 is already not good enough for me, so I'm going to wait until Office 2011 comes out.

A contradiction?

[bogaboga]

...Microsoft's battle to convince users they need to buy new software...

I wonder why a user has to be convinced that they need to buy new software if the software they are currently using is "not good enough." If one is missing some functionality, which functionality exists in another piece of software, the availability of that software will be known by word of mouth and through all other means available in this very connected world.

I just do not understand why someone has to be convinced...why?

For the record, I am using Windows2K and Firefox with Google's online Office Suite and happy to report that this combination, with an occasional boot into Kubuntu, satisfies 100% of my needs at the moment.

A subscription model would improve things

[MarkWatson]

I have blogged about this: I would be a much happier (occasional) customer of Microsoft's if they would support one version of Windows and Office at a reasonable yearly subscription price.

This would remove the drive for forced upgrades through new features that I don't care about. I would consider $40/year for Windows and $100/year for office to be reasonable. Buying a new computer would get you a 1 year subscription.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's business model requires constant growth (I was once a house guest for a weekend in a friend's home when another house guest was a Microsoft exec and his family. He said that Microsoft had to "grow a new Disney" in size every year for their business model to work). I don't think that $40/year from every legal Windows user would satisfy Microsoft's appetite.

On the other hand, look at Apple: I occasionally use OS X (Linux is my main development and writing platform) and I don't mind paying for a $130 OS X upgrade every 18 months or so - one reason is that OS X upgrades actually run faster -- great for older Macs.

Microsoft needs to get off of the forced upgrade path.

Re:A subscription model would improve things

[MyLongNickName]

$100/year for office to be reasonable.

You gotta be kidding me! I get the full version of Office for $20 through my employer. Perfectly legit. If it weren't for that, I'd still be on Office 2000.

Re:A subscription model would improve things

[MarkWatson]

I use Latex and OpenOffice, so the $100 number was not personally relevant. On the other hand, paying $40/PC (that I actually wanted Windows on) per year in return for free upgrades and Microsoft no longer adding features of dubious value seems like it would be a good deal from my perspective.

OOo needs a marketing push

[BortQ]

Today I happened to overhear a salesman going through his bit to a customer "and you'll want to include Office, which you can et a version of for $250." It too bad that customers are still under that impression. Open Office needs to get the kind of marketing push that Firefox has had. It's good enough for most people. If the people actually knew they could get a free office package they way more would opt for it. Instead, you have the salespeople padding their margins selling overpriced office software year-after-year.

Re:OOo needs a marketing push

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, what would be nice is if HP, Dell, etc installed it on their computers. If they showed the price of MS Office for $250 (or whatever the price is for the various editions), and then sold OpenOffice.org for $25 or something. As long as the profit was greater than what they get from MS Office. However, I'm sure they were hear it from MS.

I know people buy retail software but default configurations is where it's at in terms of mindshare. OpenOffice.org needs to find out from HP/Dell/etc what they need to do before the companies would offer it on the desktop.

Good enough?:

[popeyethesailor]

I see that lots of people comment the current office versions are good enough - indeed they are to the casual user who sparingly uses them. However to the power users and developer community, they've been pretty lousy till now. Server-side document generation has been pathetic; weird and expensive COM-based controls, archaic limitations, and lousy templating support.

The ribbon UI may have its uses; but I guess its just a gimmick. The real value for this release is in the server-side development, XML stuff that's gone in. And this is pretty tough to market. Still, people will buy it, since the default format's changed; and the upgrade treadmill cant be avoided.

OpenOffice and its cousins missed the bus; the minimum they needed to do was atleast match MS Office's UI performance. Sadly, even MSO2K3 spanks OO. When the competition figures out how to make a snappy, feature-rich, stable product, they'll trouble MS.

Re:Good enough?:

[Anonymous Coward]

The developer communtity uses Vi and EMACS anyway. No need to worry about forced upgrades.

Re:Good enough?:

[lifebouy]

OpenOffice and its cousins missed the bus; the minimum they needed to do was atleast match MS Office's UI performance. Sadly, even MSO2K3 spanks OO. When the competition figures out how to make a snappy, feature-rich, stable product, they'll trouble MS.

Obviously, you don't live on the same planet as the rest of us. OpenOffice surpassed MSOffice with OpenOffice 1.0 as far as UI, and keeps on widening the gap with each release. For the most part, functions work as advertised, which is something MS Office has never done. No, the problem is that you're so used to compensating for MSOffice's brokenness, you don't even realize that it's broken anymore.

As far as stability goes, I've never lost an Openoffice file. Well, not since well before version 1.0, anyway. MS Office seems to destroy my work on a regular basis. There's really no greater meter for stability, is there?

However, OO still lacks as far as grammar checking goes. That's one area MS still leads. You can keep that small victory.

Re:Good enough?:

[sootman]

I see that lots of people comment the current office versions are good enough - indeed they are to the casual user who sparingly uses them. However to the power users and developer community, they've been pretty lousy till now.

I disagree on your distinction between 'casual' and 'power' user--I know plenty of people who can make Excel walk, talk, and run a 3-minute mile--but that aside, the current version of Office (or 2000, or 97) is "good enough" for literally 95%+ of the people out there. Maybe 98%. Maybe 99%.

The ribbon UI may have its uses; but I guess its just a gimmick.

That was my first thought too. I started using the Beta, expecting to hate it, but it's not bad, and in some ways, it's really better than menus. The best things about menus are that they're compact (less and less important every year--I don't like waste, but c'mon, I've got 1600x1200 on my desktop now) and that you're used to them. The ribbons are actually not bad.

The big improvement in Office for me is live previews of formatting. I don't format stuff often, but when I do, it has to be juuuuust so, and it really is a pain to go menu -> palett -> OK -> crap, that's not it -> repeat.

That said, I'm planning to stick with Office 97 on Windows and Office X on a Mac for as long as the hardware and OSs I use support them. And I'll continue to try OpenOffice every year or so until they come out with a version I like, but unfortunately they seem to have rocketed past ever putting out a nice release--they started rough and have moved straight to bloated. They seem to be trying to copy the entire corpus of MS Office while also adding their own features. KOffice looks pretty nice & clean from what little I've used it, but I don't use Linux as a desktop.

Re:Good enough?:

[gwait]

That was called "Framemaker" and it's languishing a slow and painful death at Adobe Systems.
It was incredibly stable (on a Sun workstation mind you), you could easily do multiple volume documents, with hundreds of pages each no problem,
had working (and easy) real template support back in the 80's, had a usable basic set of drawing tools (not as fancy as Open Office Draw),
oh, and paragraph numbering always worked just right.

It does not trouble MS at all.

Open Office draw alone beats the tar out of Word's drawing tools, that's why Microsoft bought Visio (and Visio subsequently got far more unstable - big surprise).

I used to believe that technical excellence would always win, but that was before Beta vs VHS.

Re:old software not good enough? horrible argument

[BenjyD]

But what is 'good enough' changes. A text editor with word wrap would seem incredible to someone who's only used a typewriter, but people expect a little more than that from a word processor these days.

Sigh, I know how it works

[Per Abrahamsen]

Some of our external partners will get the new MS Office as part of their service contracts, and our administrative office will buy it because it makes the PHB's feel at the technological frontier. Both of these will start sending us documents that cannot be read with our old MS Office, and we will be forced to upgrade.

Same procedure as last upgrade. Same procedure as every upgrade.

We end up paying Microsoft not for new features we don't need, but for being allowed to cooperate with our partners.

This is why I believe the government needs to standardize on an open format for exchanging documents internally between branches and externally with private citizens and organizations. This is not a problem that can be solved by local decision makers. The locally optimal solution is always to go for a format that can read what the external partners, and this vicious cycle can only be broken by finding a different global optimal point.

(My math/cs background tells me that a local optimum is not necessary a global optimum, which is the provable wrong leap-of-faith that the dogmatic anti-regulation people have made).

in 2007.. i'll be upgrading to open office..

[Anonymous Coward]

For everything..

There really is no reason to keep office, we don't use macro's or .net programming.. so.. why bother.

Only keeping outlook 2k3 because email is hosted via exchange, and delivered via rpc over http.

Open office is mature enough that I have no issue putting it on our 70 desktops.

at $300/desk savings.. maybe i'll have enough to upgrade a few PC's instead of trying to make bloated software run on old machines.

the software doesn't really expire

[nurb432]

But they will make damned sure that it wont run 'right'.

Old software is indeed not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

So apt-get the newest version.

So true.

[durandal61]

'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,'

A challenge indeed. You must feel identified with these people, surely.

'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire, '

... despite the fact that we'd dearly love it to.

the quote?

[ThePepe]

"'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Change 'old' to 'new' and I'm right there with you.

Win95 + Office95

[wandazulu]

I do some consulting/pc maintenance for a small company that still runs their machines on Win95 and uses Office95 for their work, and the combo still runs fine. The majority of their "business" apps are web based, and Firefox runs fine on it, and as far as anyone is concerned, as long as the document comes off the printer correctly, no one cares what program created it.

It's interesting to go there; it's like time has stood still since 1995 and you realize that "good enough" can go back pretty darn far.

Re:Win95 + Office95

[Reziac]

As one who still uses Netscape 3 and WordPerfect 5.1 for my everyday work, I understand this completely :) They still do what I need -- in some cases better than the upgrades can. Why mess with what works?

Poles apart.

[ColaMan]

Microsoft: "One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough"

Behold, the difference between open and closed source software.

From http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/
Version 2.6 * Current: 2.6.18, 20-Sep-2006
Version 2.4 * Current: 2.4.33, 11-Aug-2006
Version 2.2 * Current: 2.2.26, 25-Feb-2004
Version 2.0 * Current: 2.0.40, 08-Feb-2004

So, 2.6 and 2.4 are actively maintained, with 2.2 released in '99 with updates to '04, and 2.0 being updated for over 8 years, since 1996. And I'll wager that there's been no more updates since then for those two kernels simply because it *is* good enough.

Need I also mention the little bit of text that is present in almost *any* F/OSS software update that pretty much says "Hey, if you're current version's working fine for you, that's great. Don't think we're forcing this on you."

Re:Poles apart.

[MojoStan]

From http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/
Version 2.6 * Current: 2.6.18, 20-Sep-2006
Version 2.4 * Current: 2.4.33, 11-Aug-2006
Version 2.2 * Current: 2.2.26, 25-Feb-2004
Version 2.0 * Current: 2.0.40, 08-Feb-2004

So, 2.6 and 2.4 are actively maintained, with 2.2 released in '99 with updates to '04, and 2.0 being updated for over 8 years, since 1996. And I'll wager that there's been no more updates since then for those two kernels simply because it *is* good enough.

When comparing Windows and Linux, we need to define "actively maintained" and determine the value of security updates/patches.

Linux Kernel 2.2 was released in '99, updated until '04, and got its last patch in January 2005. The kernel may be "good enough" feature-wise, but do you really think it's secure enough to not require any security patches since the beginning of 2005? Since 2.2 is not getting security patches anymore, is it still "good enough" (secure enough) to use?

In comparison, Windows 2000 was released in '00, updated until '05, and will continue to get security patches until 2010. Also until 2010, customers can continue to get paid support directly from Microsoft.

I'm not arguing that Windows is more secure than Linux (or even a better option), but they sure give customers a heck of along product lifecycle. Even if they can't convice customers to upgrade, they continue to supply patches for much longer than a Linux kernel gets patches. They also continue to provide paid support for their "no longer good enough" OS.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Mr_Silver]

Honestly. there is ZERO reason to upgrade from even Office 2000. Outlook 2000 is 10 times faster than outlook 2003 and god help us on the mess that is outlook 2007.

I wouldn't say ZERO.

Outlook 2000 has the annoying habit of opening all your reminders in separate windows whereas 2002 has them all in one. When you have as many reminders and tasks as me, then you quickly appreciate that.

I would love Outlook 2003 over 2002 (and especially 2000) for the saved search folders and the fact that it's better at coping when your network connection unexpectedly dies. Granted they aren't big things and certainly not enough to justify the high cost - but later versions of Outlook have often had useful additions or changes.

Now, reasons to upgrade Word or Excel for me is close to zero...

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[stubear]

That's not possible. It's been well documented by slashbots that you are forced to upgrade Office and Windows with each version that is released. You are clearly a liar because slashbots are well known for their journalistic integrity and would never make up stories about Microsoft on the spot or talk about things they know nothing about.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[erpbridge]

Also, if you're dealing with a lot of users across a slow connection (ie 200 users who access their e-mail on the Exchange server across a T1), you get some bandwidth savings using cached mode.

With Outlook 2000/XP and Exchange 2000, you keep a constant RPC connection open (for mail notification and transfer) and you transfer mail at full size.

With Outlook 2003 (using cached mode) and Exchange 2000, you contact the server once every 45-90 seconds (rand) and check for new messages. Messages transfer in a burst, but at full size.

With Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003, you get same as above, but the messages are actually compressed before the burst.

Yes, you get a 30-60 second delay that you didn't have with Outlook 2000/XP, but the bandwidth savings help quite a bit. Especially when the people in that building are using other applications across that link too (Web, constant telnet, Terminal Services).

MS is already on a subscription model.

[spiritraveller]

The problem is that just to install the software, you have to go through their crazy piracy check, which depends on contacting them after you have already bought the software.

If you want to reinstall Office 2003 in ten years, how can you be sure they will still do that for you? If they refuse, it will be bad PR, but MS already gets plenty of bad PR and it doesn't stop them from doing what they do.

I'm not sure there would be any legal recourse if, many years after you bought the software, they refused to activate it for you.

So basically, they are already on a subscription model. For them, it's just a matter of shortening the renewal period of the subscriptions they sell.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Cyberax]

Office 97 doesn't support Unicode natively (it's important if your language uses Cyrillic or Arabic script). So Office 2000 is minimum.

Problem with the software industry.

[radarsat1]

This just goes to show what I've suspected for a while... there is a problem with the software industry in general. The goals of a software company ultimately have a contradiction with the goals of software itself: The software company must fight its own products.

This is one of the reasons that, although I am a programmer by nature and by trade, I have a really hard time with the idea of starting up some kind of software company. I'd rather other people take those risks and hire me. As I see it, there are two problems with starting a software company:

1) Your product is inherently easily copied, giving it low value no matter how good it is. In fact, the more popular it is, the more likely it will be pirated, thus the better it is the LESS value it potentially has. This is definitely counter-intuitive.
2) Once you create a product that does what it needs to do and is easy to use, what then? Software eventually always reaches a plateau, and it becomes a question of "now what?" At this point software companies start to add "features" that bloat the software bundle and aren't wanted by customers, in the hopes that they've at least acquired a dedicated customer base that will buy the new version simply because it is "the newest version".

No, as I see it, it's better to do software in your spare time, and release it for free. Not because I'm some kind of altruist, but just because I see it as being a much more viable way to focus on the "product" rather than the "profits".

To clarify -- I'm certainly not any kind of anti-profit advocate. I'm a capitalist. I just don't see software and other information-based services as fitting into a capitalist model very well. As soon as you are a software company, you must focus on getting customers to upgrade, rather than on making sure they have a good experience with your product. Any industry in which it's in a company's interests to make sure its own customers are having a bad experience is in contradiction with itself, as far as I can see. I think the same thing goes for anti-virus products -- it's in their interests to make sure there are viruses around. They have built up their flagship products on the existance of something evil. There is simply something wrong with that.

This is why I tend to trust open-source products. I know that they have no reason to exist except to "get the job done", and therefore they do what they are meant to, and nothing else.

Re:Problem with the software industry.

[HikingStick]

What happened to the days when software vendors released new versions when their user base told them (through numerous feature requests) that it was time? Now, we have the cart before the horse. Microsoft (and others) went from implementing business requirements in their software, to telling users what their requirements should be. It's a darn shame...

Re:Problem with the software industry.

[jawtheshark]

As I see it, there are two problems with starting a software company:

Well, both you and I see these problems, but let me guess: you are just like me a seasoned developer that has been exposed to open source. I for one use open source products everywhere I can, even on windows. As an example: on my company machine I had a legit version of WinZip. I uninstalled it an installed 7zip instead. Why? Because, 7zip is free and does the job way better than WinZip.

However, there are so many young developers that only have been exposed to the Windows world and still think that their next software product will be a killer. Sure, in highly specialized sectors, you might be able to sell software. With "highly specialized", I mean software that is used by a very small consumer base: doctors for example. I had a discussion with a young not-yet-out-of-school developer who thought that he was going to sell software to the public. I tried to convince him that software is a dead end and that he should go for service if he really wanted to start his own company. He wouldn't listen. I wonder if he made it. I never heard of him and his software ever again....

Everytime I have a "killer idea", the first thing I do is see if there is an open source solution. 99% of the time, I find one that suits my needs. The other 1% of the time, it was usually a silly idea in the first place ;-)

to push vista upgrades?

[fermion]

It seems to me that a lot of effort is being to made to push MS Office upgrades, when most of the money comes from MS WIndows OEM and general site licenses. Most users will upgrade with site license. A few will buy their copy with the computer. I suspect most will not upgrade without a shift to Vista.

With these assumption, MS might be tying both upgrades together. The upgrade to vista is likely more of an issue as it seems that the OS availability is more tied to long term licensing. So it would seem that the deal is to enable sales to use MS Office as another reason to upgrade to MS Windows Vista. This may be an issue as 20% of user might still be using pre XP SP2 OS. There is a fear of change.

I think what MS has allowed to happen is the creation of an XP world. Users are convinced that switching an OS is a catastrophic event, with phenomenal training costs. A myth created and perpetuated by MS. For many user XP is all they know, and MS was perfectly happy insuring that XP was all they knew. For many admins, XP is all they know, and all they have been trained to do is monkey in XP. In such a world, who in their right mind would upgrade?

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[bmajik]

1. Cached Exchange Mode. All versions of outlook without this are absolute unusable garbage. This feature was what allowed me to stop using PINE+IMAP at work.

2. RPC over HTTPS. This is _huge_ for mobile workers.

I happen to really like Outlook 2007. I've not noticed any speed problems with it. They've done a good job since OL2k of removing possible high-latency calls on UI threads, making the client much more interactive in a variety of situations. In 2000 Outloook+Exchange were unusable. I remember the exchange team having an "SP1 ship party" and thinking I'd run over there and choke all of them, perhaps screaming "get back in your f@#$king offices and fix this bullshit until i can read email as quickly and easily as me and _50000_ other students could using pine+sendmail on a 2 proc dec alpha"

Outlook and Exchange have gotten _much_ better since then. I can use them without wanting to kill people, which has left me free to be angry about other Microsoft intolerables, like DRM, windows stealing focus, and long path name support :)

Upgrade your current version of Word

[ettlz]

Your path begins here. Praise be to His Almighty Knuthiness and Blessed Angel Lamport.

Hard to go back

[HangingChad]

I've been using OpenOffice so long it's hard to go back to MSFT products, even when working at a customer site where they use it. That's mildly amusing because it was sort of a rocky transition when I switched to OO.

A lot of users get comfortable with what they're using, whether it's OO, Office or another product and giving them a compelling reason to change is no small challenge. And then there are people like me who think the $400 price tag to go through that transition pain is a laugher.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Ginger Unicorn]

im just downloading openoffice becuase excel2000 only lets you search one worksheet at a time and i have a workbook with 600 sheets in it, and i need to find some text somewhere. apparently this feature was only introduced in office 2k3 so i'm hoping to god openoffice can do it.

besides, all this "office97 has all the features anyone would need" stuff is only backed up by a bunch of individual anecdotes. of course there are features in offices later than 97 that people need. slashdot is always flooded with personal anecdotes to back up swathing generalisations.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[MMC Monster]

Office 2000 is actually quite good. Thankfully I have a couple (legal) copies of it. The transition from Office 2000 to openoffice.org is not too harsh as well (except powerpoint with video animations, unfortunately).

It IS good enough. Or rather, would be

[Opportunist]

As a matter of fact, for good 95% of the people using it, it is good enough. Win2k was pretty much the last OS that brought any measurable improvement over its predecessors in the Windows line of OSs. And even those improvements (over NT4) only really mattered to you if you're a gamer.

For the Office line, the matter is even more blatant. There has been no really tangible improvement since Office97. Sure, fine, there have been a few tweaks and the macros work heaps different now. But does that matter to the average user and his need for simplified letter writing and his spreadsheet needs?

So, in a nutshell, Office97 on a Win2k or even NT4 machine is plenty for a good 95% of the users.

Re:It IS good enough. Or rather, would be

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there is one difference for spreadsheet users. Excel 2007 supports over a million rows. It's a scary thought, but some people need and want that functionality.

typo

[sootman]

"One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough."

He misspelled 'fact.'

I, like many users, am coming up on my 10 year anniversary of using Office 97. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself still using it in 2017. All it'll do is get quicker and quicker on newer hardware.

Not 'good enough' - oh, this should be easy!

[toby]

'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,'

That should be an easy sell for anyone who's used Microsoft's rubbish.

The hard sell is that the next version down the pike WILL be 'good enough'.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Lumpy]

Most corporations have policies against using PST files and even have IT staff delete them when they find them.
PST files are a giant security hole. Hell AT&T had a security policy that all sent and recieved email MUST be deleted after 90 days, no exceptions. it limits liability significantly.

Why do you think they started using years

[Colin Smith]

Why do you think they stopped using version numbers? It's obvious that Office 2003 is out of date. It's almost 4 years old.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally don't agree with those sentiments: working at the I.T. department of an ICT company with some 4,000 employees worldwide, I have definitely seen added performance and employee satisfaction after all clients in our office had been upgraded to Windows XP and Office 2003 (previously W2K / Office 2000). With a 95% laptop base, the stability and robustness of Outlook 2003 is definitely a huge leap forward from the previous Outlook version, and the rest of the software suite is also more comfortable to use. I'd prefer OS X over Windows any day, but given the circumstances I am now happier than I was with the previous generation of Microsoft's products.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[nra1871]

GeoWrite 128. Does the same things I do in Word, but runs in 128k of RAM. Of course you need to dig up a Commodore and an 80 column monitor...

Re:old software not good enough? horrible argument

[aadvancedGIR]

Absolutely.
Last year, I was working on a General Electric product based on NT4 that we had to port to 2K. NT was considered "good enough" by the team and the change was made only because they were near the end of their licenses stock for the new manufactured equipments and most of the deployed ones are still on NT.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Anonymous Coward]

Office 97 probably does have all the features you need. But it definitely lacks the polish of 2003. There's so many times using 97 or 2000 where you just want to smack your head against the wall because you have to fight with the program to do what you want. It's been improved a lot with 2003. Outlook 2003's UI alone is way more polished than its 2000's counterpart.

I was forced to upgrade..

[matt me]

from 'dows 95 to 98 earlier this year, when Mozilla dropped compatibility in firefox 2.

Re:I was forced to upgrade..

[modicr]

Opera works in Windows 95

Re:I was forced to upgrade..

[Anonymous Coward]

win98 compatability goes in firefox v3...

MS Office Subscription

[MrCopilot]

I loath Ms Office. As an MIS, I cannot justify the liscencing cost to roll out new versions. Version incompatability was the straw that broke my back back in 2000.

Contrast that with the cost of explaining that OO does in fact have the feature that they are used to. Finding that feature and teaching it to the user. OO wins everytime.

If only there was a windows based Outlook Replacement. (Evolution looks perfect but on win32 it's just not ready.) Thunderbird needs a bigger staff. Google, can we get a little help?

The only way I would reccomend a switch back, is for MS to change to a subscription based model for Office. Even then I would be reluctant. There is something very satisfying about "free" tools.

I overheard this snippet from the Production Manager and the Chief Engineer. The Open Tools do fine but don't support the PowerUser.

My response was to ask what "power user" task they could not accomplish that they needed, and who here thinks they are more of a power user than me.

Note: The actual complaint was a csv import into Spreadsheet. 2 second solution. The only real complaint I have not been able to resolve successfully was a mailmerge issue.

Re:MS Office Subscription

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there was a windows based Outlook Replacement. (Evolution looks perfect but on win32 it's just not ready.) Thunderbird needs a bigger staff. Google, can we get a little help?

Eudora will be based on Thunderbird for its new versions.

Good enough?

[AlXtreme]

Lamport's LaTeX User Guide (1994) is good enough for me. Doesn't expire either. Now get off my lawn!

Persuading

[Nom du Keyboard]

Persuading consists of breaking backward compatibility by setting all the defaults to save in formats that earlier versions cannot read as a convenience to the user. Then pop-up big warning boxes that some features may not be preserved if you insist on saving in an older format.

While I haven't run MSO2007 myself yet, I've seen this in so many previous MSO updates that I would actually be surprised if this is not the case yet again.

Re:Persuading

[tmh - The Mad Hacker]

Persuade (v.) See also: Soften up, educate, hustle, blackmail, pistol whip.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Phu5ion]

Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to buy. I've been running my copy for 10 years and it still does everything I need.

Except interoperate with Office <insert newer version here>.

But who can use the new features?

[Relden]

The problem with a lot of the new features in Office is that you need to be in IT to understand them or implement them. Group workspaces, XML documents, electronic forms and workflows? Betty in Accounting might benefit from these if they were set up for her and presented to her properly, but she probably won't understand what they mean, let alone use them without help. But many, maybe most, companies have outsourced their IT departments, so there is nobody to help Betty do this, so she is just going to ignore these features and keep using the bits of Office she knows. This works for Microsoft: the outsource firms have the contracts and will get the upgrades. But you have to wonder what would happen if the outsource firms' corporate customers start to question the charges they are getting?

You Mean

[aquatone282]

. . . after finally figuring out how to shut Clippy the hell up in Office 2003 I have to upgrade?

"allows you to keep using Office 2003"

[dcam]

FTA:
Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire

Gee thats *really* kind of them. The way it's worded suggests that if their business model didn't allow you to use Office 2003 they would have no problems stopping you using older versions of Office.

Keep Govt Out means abolishing IP laws

[Anonymous Coward]

So I agree with you. Keep government from telling me how many computers I'm allowed to install MS Office on.

I have an idea for Microsoft

[J.R. Random]

Convince those of your customers who use and like your existing products that they're dinosaurs -- creaking old fossils. Small brained relics from the ancient past. Make a big ad campaign based on that theme! They'll upgrade out of sheer embarrassment! I know that if I bought a company's product and then that company told me I was an old fool for liking it, I'd be eager to upgrade to their newer product.

"Good enough."

[Anonymous Coward]

Picture a mid-90s project to roll a certain version of Windows out to 6000 desktops. Imagine all of those desktops were using Lotus 123 and Word Perfect, with the users comfortable with the macros, minor bugs, and, yes, "reveal codes" feature. Thrill at the fact that management decided they would address the conversion issue of all these documents and workflow-critical macros by leaving the old applications in place after migration.

Think of four years later, the absolute astonishment as to how darned fast Word Perfect 5.1 DOS runs on a Pentium III.

Re:Problem - Its Not About NOT BROKE

[Nom du Keyboard]

60% of businesses were still running Win 2K and had NO plans to switch to XP. This is an ongoing problem for M$. More and more businesses are taking the "if it aint broke, don't fix it" approach to software.

This is not about the stuck-in-mud, it-ain't-broke mentality that prevents businesses from moving from 2K to XP. It's that fact that for nearly all businesses uses, XP is inferior to 2K!

XP costs money and time to upgrade; has Activation and WGA hassles; has more bloat requiring more hardware and memory to run as well; offers unneeded, and even unwanted, features in a business environment; seems to have the bulk of security issues; doesn't run programs that won't run equally well under 2K; and gives no foreseeable advantages in return. Why would any sane business want to take on that?

The only reason we started upgrading to XP was when necessary drivers for the newest notebook computers were literally unavailable under 2K.

Dream on

[Lord Kano]

Nothing short of a complimentary blowjob from Melinda Gates will make me even consider buying Office 2007.

LK

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[misleb]

I would love Outlook 2003 over 2002 (and especially 2000) for the saved search folders and the fact that it's better at coping when your network connection unexpectedly dies.

Sounds like you are one of those people who has to compensate for an incompetent IT department.

-matthew

Don't Expire? Yes they do!

[nalfeshnee]

What does he mean with "doesn't really expire"?

Doesn't he read his own website?

Every product has a planned lifecycle. New system was brought in only four years ago.

You got your basic Windows desktop license lifecycles, for example:

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default .mspx

And you got your product support lifecycles, e.g. Office 2000:

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh; %5Bln%5D;lifecycle

and there are probably more kinds of lifecycles somewhere else on the constantly 404-ed MS pages.

Interesting facts from the two pages mentioned above:

  - ALL versions of XP will be discontinued (i.e. no more licenses) "12 months after Vista launches"
  - All non-business app software has a support lifecycle of five years
  - All business software has a support lifecycle of ten, with the last five reduced to paid support and security fixes

Re:Why upgrade? Know Your TRUE COSTS

[Nom du Keyboard]

Many consumers will choose what is familiar over what is better, even given a clear-cut advantage.

While I find your article very insightful, and well worth the +5 it has earned (and I've saved it because I like your arguments), you miss a point. You don't discuss an analysis of needs verses true cost of the upgrade.

The only reason I moved from MSO97 to MSO2000 is that I needed to make that move to do VB6 software development for customers. I've stayed with MSO2000 since because it offers everything I need.

Why pay for features I don't need; need to learn the ins and outs of the new system; my time to upgrade; plus dealing with a whole new round of bugs and issues. That's a high price to me, and only benefits MS.

You discuss not upgrading when there is no apparent cost and compelling advantages. For many of us, neither of those conditions are true if we already own MSO97 or later.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh.... not if you can't read Arabic. Now I wonder if that was the compelling reason for most English speaking businesses to switch to Office 2000. Now with native unicode support (Cyrillic and Arabic now supported out of the box!)

Upgrading

[TheRecklessWanderer]

I run a business with 15 people. We are classified a small business,but we are on the large side of that. I have an IT budget of $20,000 a year for office computers. Pretty generous I think. So I either buy new machines and put Vista on them, and office 2007, and go over my budget, or I can just sit with what I have now, and avoid all the training and hardship associated with it. I'm sure have the software we wrote in Visual Basic 6.0 will break and I'll have to spend weeks making it work. But I'm just not interested in all the extra work. They will have to drag me kicking and screaming towards Vista, it'll be like that Arnie movie where his head nearly explodes in low air pressure on the surface of Mars. Like your US President says "Ain't gonna do it."

Re:Hmmm...Maybe MSO97

[Nom du Keyboard]

I know very few people who need more than Office 95 had to offer.

The change from MSO95 to MSO97 was very significant. Much more so than any that has since followed. The MSO97 .DOC file format, VBA macros, and COM integration are all major things to have. Beyond that point, however, I've seen nothing else nearly as significant as any one of those changes in the later versions.

Sounds ominous

[multisync]

'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 -- the software doesn't really expire,'

Wonder how much longer that will last

An old joke but...

[simm1701]

Boy: Dad... What does a word processor do???
Father: Well son, you've seen what a food processor does to food?

vi works perfectly fine as a word processor for me!! No stupid paper clips getting in the way!

Microsoft's Greatest Competitor

[ajs318]

Microsoft's greatest competitor is not the Open Source movement, nor any closed-source vendor (actually, they killed off all the closed-source competition long ago. Would you rather buy a £50 office suite and save £450 or pirate a £500 office suite and save £500? Exactly. Nobody has to pirate the £50 one, but piracy is still what killed the company). Microsoft's greatest competitor is old versions of Microsoft software.

Unlike a consumable product, or something which has moving parts and must eventually wear out, it's not possible to add built-in obsolescence to software. You can keep old software running forever by just replacing the hardware it's running on. As long as there is some way to read the original disc into the new machine, you can keep using it.

One tactic might be to try to stop you doing that using legal threats. But some countries' laws are weighted against the poor starving corporations; and so those greedy consumers get an unfair inalienable right to install any software they have acquired legitimately on any hardware they have acquired legitimately.

So Microsoft have to resort to the tactic of changing file formats. By making subtle changes to the Word .doc format with each successive version, they can ensure that documents saved out of this year's Word are unreadable by last year's Word. Of course, this year's Word has to be able to read last year's Word documents, so increasing the size of the software -- and also inflating minimum hardware requirements, as Word becomes ever more obese.

I give it about 10 years before Microsoft collapse under the weight of their own shit. The Rest of the World are slowly waking up to this vendor lock-in thing and aren't entirely happy about it -- after all, most industrial parts are available from a range of suppliers. Any M8 nut will screw onto any M8 bolt. But only Microsoft software can read .doc and .xls files. Interesting things are going to happen when users get stranded with large stashes of files whose readability is predicated upon payment of money to Microsoft ..... especially when some of those users are governments and have the power to change laws .....

Re:Old versions of software not good enough? Sched

[Nom du Keyboard]

'm going to wait until Office 2011 comes out.

Uh, that's already slid. It's now Office 2013, but will be even better still when it arrives.

Clever Semantics

[Anonymous Coward]

"...consumers will need persuading to make the change.""

Read as: "...consumers will need persuading to give us still more of their money."

"Change" sounds so positive, so innocuous. Cut to the chase Microsoft, you've got quarterly results to post, and your shareholders are gree^H^H^H^H hungry.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Phillup]

Of course you need to dig up a Commodore and an 80 column monitor...

You say that as if it were hard to do.

I can find a C64 w/ tape or floppy drive & monitor in my house a lot easier than I can find a machine running Windows.

Of course, I'd rather find something that would run on one of my Amigas instead...

;-)

Software only needs to do a certain amount.

[91degrees]

It's surprising just how functional Office 95 is on a 200MHz PC with plenty of RAM.

Microsoft are tools

[coastwalker]

I have said it before and I will say it again - the ribbon is a pile of crap

I want hierarchical menus and will not use some dumb ass icon based system.

And if you think I'm just a Luddite - could someone tell me what I am going to have to pay for the next version of office that brings back menus with words in them so that I can use the voice driven interface?

Pah.

Not true - works great through Office 2003...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Except interoperate with Office .

Not true - works great at least through Office 2003...I exchange files (especially Powerpoint and Word docs) with people from other companies running that all the time.

.docx and security...

[PinkPanther]

From TFA:

XML is a lot more robust and secure. It's much harder to break into those file formats and do bad things.

Uh...isn't the point to moving to XML that it be interoperable...easier to get access to the data and do good things? Standard text file and all that?

Oh, wait...MS-Standard Text File...

Product replacement vs. investment

[coleopterana]

It's probably a slight cliche now that the American consumer is somewhat programmed to want the newest and shiniest version of whatever item it is they already have, though we've seen above that professionals, companies and overall the average user don't apply that to software, and that companies who provide software and new versions of it would like us to treat software the way we generally do other products. Why do all of you suppose that Microsoft is failing at this (acknowledging the 'if it aint broke' thinking already) where, for instance, Ford pioneered the concept of 'having the latest model'? I've had some of my own thoughts about the differences in the corporate and the public eye about software purchasing, primarily along the lines of it not being considered a purchase so much as an investment in terms of initial capital, upkeep, time to learn and necessary requirements to troubleshoot and fix. I'm interested to see what the community here thinks.

This isn't JUST a Microsoft problem

[neersign]

I'm amazed (well, not really) that I've read through so many posts all bashing MS for needing to "trick" people in to buying their new product. Then I remembered this is Slashdot, and this is an article on MS so I settled down a little bit. But, this is not simply a MS problem, this is a problem with every company that produces a product that needs to be sold. Products do not always sell themselves. This is why some people make a living as a "Salesman" or "Saleswoman". Brace yourself for a car analogy: New cars come out every year, yet people still drive around in their beat up old 1980 Chevy pickup that would be worth more money as scrap metal. Even when it refuses to start or leaves them stranded on the side of the road, they will spend hours fixing it instead of buying a new truck. To them, it is "good enough". So, card companies routinely come up with new ways to try and show how their truck is not "good enough" anymore and they really need to buy the brand new truck with navigation and upgraded audio. It is much easier to see how the brand new tuck really is "better", but that old truck is still "good enough" for many people. And in reality, you can carry this analogy over to any industry that needs to sell a product.

So, continue with the MS bashing, but please realize this is not a localized problem.

2000 for me.

[antdude]

I still like it. I didn't like 2002/XP and 2003. Not sure about 2007 since I haven't used it. I hope to keep using 2000 for a while in XP. Not sure what I will be using when I use Vista.

7Zip? More like 7bit! SLOW AS FUCK.

[ClioCJS]

Last time it took so long to decompress a file, I was on an 8088. I'd rather have my download be 10% longer, than wait 50% longer for it to unzip. I'm actually at the computer waiting, when unzipping. When downloading, I'm asleep or at work and a few extra minutes of download doesn't matter. I can't stand 7zip, or the fact that the installer doesn't correctly associate the .7z extension with the application! So I have to say "open with", then GUESS which of the 5-or-so binaries to use (all in \program files\7zip\).... And hope. Plug and play? Not even close. Hopefully they fixed that in newer versions.

Re:7Zip? More like 7bit! SLOW AS FUCK.

[jawtheshark]

Must be you... Never had any problems and I use P-III machines on a regular basis. Never had a problem with file associations. They are simply nice and let you choose yourself what associations you want, instead of grabbing the associations like every fucking commercial Windows application. It's right there, in the "Options" menu.

But, hey, if you want to pay for saving a few seconds occasionally (even if I never found that 7Zip was slow), and have less archives that you can open without having a second tool, feel free to do so.

Microsoft's battle...

[fyngyrz]

...to convince users they need to buy new software...

...has been 100% effective here. I've converted our whole household to Macs. One too many annoying little bubbles popping up in the task bar, one too many spyware infections, one too many complaints about the boot process having stretched into minutes.

And now, Vista carries the not too subtle warning that it will need "more resources." Sorry. After spending quality time with OSX and being reminded what a speedy OS feels like, I've come to the conclusion that MS is too far behind the curve these days.

And you know what's really sad? I've been making PC software since Windows 3.1.

There is only one reason to activate the prodct

[gd23ka]

By 2010 when they stop activating Office 2003 or earlier you will then most likely find a patch
that makes activation for that product unnecessary. The only real reason for going through
"activation" right now with a "authentic product key" is because you want to get the latest fixes
and patches. You may want to archive these however so Microsoft can't take them away when it's
time for Office "Oddysee" 2010.

It used to be the case...

[phorm]

Back in the old days, moving up from 98 to XP was definately an upgrade. In terms of the OS itself there were more features, better memory management, and less crashes. Awhile after the whole RPC-call virus debacle came about, but overall XP is a better OS.

I simply cannot see the same being true for Vista. It's a pig on resources. It hinders the user with DRM and WGA, sometimes disabling legit users. Other than looking different (again at a cost of CPU/RAM), it really doesn't offer me more than XP, except for perhaps a better security model (yet to be proven) which overall seems to be in many ways a hinderance over a help.

The biggest thing that's going to push Vista over XP is as Microsoft does its best to kill off any updates/features/fixes in the old OS. No new DirectX layers, less patches for various things, and perhaps in the end less hardware support.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Ginger Unicorn]

magnificent. you can search the entire workbook, but you can only have 256 worksheets in one book. looks like we have at least one user who need office2k3.

If it ain't broke

[phorm]

Well, the solution to this is simple. MS controls the patch and update cycle for previous windows generations. If it ain't broke... they can break it enough that it becomes inconvenient to not upgrade.

Re:old software not good enough? horrible argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. Welcome to life. Things change. Things evolve.

Cognitive Energy Cost - neglected

[Tungbo]

in your analysis.

For any one to learn a new system, it must not be just marginally better.
It has to be much, much better because there is always a cost to learning
a new way of doing things - cognitive load, trust, etc.

It is not irrational to stay with a solution that is good enough and
not move to an alternative that is somewhat better, but not spectacularly so.

This is a REAL barrier that alternatives like Linux really has to cross.
That's why it's critical to provide the customer support or hand-holding
or it will never succeed regardless of how good the technical infrastructure is.

Re:Good enough?: Personally,

[davidsyes]

I'd rather seem IBM/Lotus bring Lotus SmartSuite into this decade, as opposed to letting it linger in 1998 codeland. Unfortunately, it has been allowed to be trampled by even OpenOffice.

Yet, OO.o has NO decent end-user database, such as Lotus Approach. Forms and grids are normal, but Approach has integrated charts, reports, and a reasonably acceptable crosstab view, too. I showed a Cal Berkeley student took a computer programming class some of the stuff I do in Approach, and he gasped, recounting how maddening it was to do some stuff in Java, how it took WEEKS debugging shit. I'm not a programmer, and cringe at the thought of being forced to become one when I can do 80% of what I need to do by using WYSIWYG apps like Approach for my database, chart and forms needs. I can even hook it up to MySQL backends so I don't need to rely upon .dbf.

Lotus Word Pro has non-modal dialog boxes and smart tools/smart palettes that allow WYSIWYG editing without jumping in and out of dialogs just to see things as they *might* appear on paper.

It is quite heartbreaking that IBM and Sun and OO.o are not collaborating to merge the best of SmartSuite and OO.o. Together, they'd be a swift kick in the jewels for ms office.

I sure wish I'd win the Powerball or something over $200M. I'd try to buy SmartSuite, pull as Shuttleworth, and hire devs to bring SmartSuite up to date. Pay off the assholes who are hanging the pre-merger patent thingy over IBM's head, keeping SmartSuite from being decompiled, run thru QT/Trolltech and Glade, and depriving hundreds of thousands or a couple million Linux and SmartSuite lovers from having a combination to die for.

I'm forced to use ms orifice in the workplace, and I *occasionally* fire up OO.o, but the interface is to mshaft-like, too huge, and wasting my screen space. I prefer SmartSuite's tighter, crisper, snappier interface. Lotus SmartSuite, inside Win98, in Win4Lin, in Mandrake 10.1, in 256 MB RAM on an 800 MHz computer, with Firestarter and Etherape (chewing RAM) with a couple browsers (Konqueror, chewing more than 25 MB RAM) with MULTITUDES of tabs open, opens in about 4 seconds. I even give windoze 98 120 MB of RAM. and SmartSuite opens STILL in about 4 seconds. WHY, WHY, WHY the hell cannot OO.o open that fast, withOUT the fast-start-like gimmickry tool? It's depressing and maddening simultaneously.

Gods, let me win a Powerball I'd damn near buy or clone SmartSuite and then demand IBM accept a decent cut of the profits, after dealing with those pre-merger patenteers who are in the way of things.... I'd give the SMARTSUITE END USERS what they want: SmartSuite natively run in Linux, kernel-independent, KDE/Gnome-independent (like, for the LIFE of me, WHY the hell is CUPS a major dependency for KDE 3.2, so much so that I could not even upgrade, nor remove libcups without ripping out ALL of KDE? I had to fall back to Gnome, manually install the 1.1.23.17 libcups, then cups and common, and drivers and THEN install KDE on top of it, all because I cannot use Mdv 2007 with Win4Lin (for windoze 98, and I SURE as hell (as yet) have no reason to fork over $200 for hexed-p or two-kay when w98 is a smaller footprint on my machine) because of the 2.6.17 kernel. Well, THAT problem is because win4lin the company screwed us w98 users who don't NEED win4lin for w98 tech support, we just need an environment for w98 that is kernel-independent. And, our thanks: they come out with win4lin virtual server and desktop that deprive/deny the use of w98.

Anyway, IBM, please, please give us SmartSuite users a non-wine, non-win4-lin, non-emulator environment fresh upgrade to Lotus SmartSuite. Please?

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Allador]

What does their IT staff have to do with inconsistent network connections?

Undock your laptop and carry it over to the conference room, you've come off one network and up on another one.

Move from work to home with your laptop.

Change seats in the terminal while waiting for your flight.

Move from one Starbucks to another.

All of these result in your network connection being inconsistent, and coming up and down, but has nothing to do with an incompetent IT department.

This is all fairly normal stuff for a mobile IT person, and Outlook 2003 on Exchange 2003 with Cached Exchange Mode is like a Godsend if you have that kind of lifestyle.

Re: File Format Problems

[TaoPhoenix]

I wish to complain about backward incompatible format changes. I had one of our junior associates send me an .xlsx (Office 2007 Excel) file as an experiment. My machine with Office 2003 couldn't read it even after I downloaded the compatibility pack.

I think we need a little more of "Good Enough" in the world so we can "just get some work done". I'm looking forward to the non-sales atmosphere of Linux.

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[adamanthaea]

Office 97? I'm still using Office 95.

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[Crayon Kid]

Let me get this straight, you waited for Outlook 2007 to move away from Pine? As in, it's the first Outlook that beats Pine? The Pine that hit version 4 in 1998 and had only minor version releases since? Seriously, almost a decade? Wow. Kudos to Microsoft. Took their time but finally made at least one customer happy.

pay?

[Anonymous Coward]

cost of not paying for winzip: 1 click per unzip. 0 if you have a patch :)

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[misleb]

Sorry, I just use plain ol' IMAP. I have never had to deal with such issues. I sometimes assume other people's lives are as simple as mine.

You're right, it clearly has nothing to do with IT staff.

-matthew

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bu

[Emetophobe]

Office 95? I'm still using Notepad.exe

Re:While IT staff around the world convince otherw

[bmajik]

Cached exchange mode showed up several versions back - either XP or 2003, i don't recall which.

Re:Good enough?: Personally,

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot be serious about Lotus SmartSuite unless you work for Lotus or maybe IBM and they forced you to use it. as bad as office is it doesn't compare to that smartsuite crap/

Re:Grammer checking?:

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never found grammer checking to be useful on any version of any office suite.
("The last three sentences have begun with "The contractor shall . . . " -- well, duh, I am writing a specification")
Spell checking seems to be OK for any suite that allows me to add words to the dictionary.
I could use a good thesaurus. Word has one that is vastly inferior to WordPerfect's.
I wish OOo had a good thesaurus, does anyone know if there's one that can be added in?

Re:There is only one reason to activate the prodct

[spiritraveller]

By 2010 when they stop activating Office 2003 or earlier you will then most likely find a patch
that makes activation for that product unnecessary.

Maybe I will... maybe it's already out there. Not sure if the DMCA already makes it illegal to circumvent "software activation" on your own software for the purpose of using the license. But if it isn't illegal they will make it illegal soon enough.

Isn't that as easy as it's been before?

[silverdr]

Just introduce some "little improvements and extensions" to the file format that'll make the older version incapable of properly working with the files created or only edited using the newer version. On the second front just deliver as many packages to the businesses along with the IT contracts as possible and the users of the newer version will take great care of persuading the users of the older ones all by themself. Plain and simple... or something has changed?!

Re:Office 97 - The last M$ Office you needed to bi

[emjoi_gently]

Scrolling.
I know it's silly, but Word 97 was designed for old 100Mhz machines and the scrolling is stuffed. Text zooms by too fast.

And 2000 fixes some bugs and cleans up the UI a bit.
So I'll say Office 2000 is the go.

I haven't bought any MS-Office product

[leonbrooks]

I use OpenOffice.

Yes, you have the odd compatibility problem, but you get those between MS-Office versions as well. I've even had it happen with patched versions of MSO dropping the bundle when reading files written by the unpatched version which preceded it.

In one case, OpenOffice translations worked around the problems (well, the few incompatibilities raised were negligible compared with the inter-MSO glitches).

In another, where the 2/3 of the customer's documents were "stuck" to an ancient laser printer which died, & the new printer didn't quite cover as much paper with ink, & they couldn't lay hand on another, they simply had to pull each document which failed, and correct it and test-print it. This was pre-OpenOffice (well... StarDivision's StarOffice was only just released), but even so OOo would have fixed only a small fraction of the problems, which were to do with where hand-formatted print (Tabs & spaces & Enters) landed on the paper. If it had been entered in OOo originally, this wouldn't have been a problem since OOo doesn't get so "stuck" to the printer.

Ungrammatical sig

[Archtech]

"Beware of he who denies you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

That should be "beware of him..." It's the object of "beware", and that overrides the consideration that it is also the subject of "who denies". More to the point, the way you have it sounds wrong.

Maybe this approach could work...

[Wizard052]

It may take more overhead though... but why not make it possible to have two or more different, seperate versions of Office being able to install and run properly in one computer? May it already is, I don't know. Perhaps with some implementation via sandboxing or virtual machines or whatever...the point is that those who don't wish to have to adopt the new version as the previous one is perfect for their needs and also dont wish to antagonise clients who continue correspond with their new version files, can have their cake and eat it, too.

Re: Open Office Vs. M$

[TaoPhoenix]

Except Open Office is Open as in ______, so it's not going to whack a paycheck/day's sales to upgrade that. Plus, I see no need to maniacally upgrade that to oblivion either. I used the Beta 2 for some two years. I see the Release Version V2.0x is available, so I can park on that for 5 years.