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Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy"
walterbyrd writes with a warning: "Microsoft is pushing Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy.' Please don't let your friends and relatives install Microsoft 'trial' software. When Microsoft tells you 'try-before-you-buy,' the 'buy' part is not meant to be an option. Once you 'try' a Microsoft 'upgrade' you can not easily go back, because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read." The ChannelRegister article also notes how Microsoft's push goes against the grain of the consumer revolt against "crapware." Read on for an account of walterbyrd's experience with a previous Microsoft trial upgrade.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office 2007.
How, then, is this even a story? The submitter warns of the impending danger of the 07 trial, goes over his experiences with the 03 trial, and then admits he hasn't even tried the 07 trial.
A friend of mine bought a Toshiba Satellite with vista from Best Buy, and it came preinstalled with the Office 2007 trial. He used it for a week. He then uninstalled the 2007 trial via the control panel, installed his retail license of 2003 (he was not a fan of the ribbon...), and imported his files without any compatibility issues, including his entire Outlook file, contacts, email, everything.
I encountered no difficulties when switching from the Office 2007 trial to OpenOffice.org. It's funny, OpenOffice.org in no way supports the 2007 file format. What happens with Outlook I'm not sure, but the rest of the Office suite doesn't convert any files unless you choose to. It's really not hard to select 'Save in Office 97-2003 format' from a drop down menu on the save dialogue.
The article doesn't say anything regarding the behavior of Office 2007 when installed on a machine with an older version of Office. It's a bare-bones commentary on OEM installations of trials of Office 2007. There is absolutely no indication that the problems encountered by the submitter will come up again.
So, this scare-tactic post amounts to someone asserting that something bad happened in the past, and might, possibly, maybe, could happen in the future.
Wow, thanks for the information, I never would have thought of that on my own.
(Furthermore, does any company that uses trial-ware want you to do anything besides buy the software? Game companies use demos all of the time, AND THEY DON"T WANT YOU TO CONSIDER BUYING THE GAME TO BE OPTIONAL EITHER. But, because this is and MS story on Slashdot, we just have to bash them for every perfectly normal thing that they do.)
Pathetic.
why would you think if you save over your document in one format, uninstalling said program would roll back your files as well?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Speculation is a great thing, but it quickly loses its luster when stated as fact. The little disclaimer you stuck on the bottom should be right under the headline.
You'd think that something as important as a "standard" document format wouldn't change enough to become incompatible every 1-4 years.
Can you open an XHTML 1.0 web page designed now in an HTML 3.2 browser from 1997 (10 years ago)? Yes, you usually can.
Any "standard" document format should never become unreadable by old software.
I'm not a user of OpenOffice, so I won't comment on that. But I've never had a problem opening TXT or RTF or HTML or PDF. I look forward to the day when the most common rich word processing format is also the most compatible.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displa ylang=en
Wow would you look at that... you don't actually have to upgrade in order to open new Office files! Just another case of Microsoft forcing people to not necessarily upgrade!
Slashdot resorts to making crap up?
/. headlines can we expect next?
..................
What in the hell is happening to this site. Once a good source of fairly trusted information or stories from around the net and now we are finding duplicates of stories everyday, biased submitter comments that don't even understand the articles they are posting and NOW we get opinion on subjects that are complete incompetence or flat out lies.
How can someone talk about using 2007 Office when they admit they never used it?
How can we trust an article where the user is SO STUPID that they reinstalled Office to import data when the software installed ALREADY does this automatically if they would just have freaking looked at the options instead of assuming MS is evil and forcing users to into their software.
This isn't even about MS or Office or Office 2007. This is about an really incompetent computer user proporting themselves as an 'expert' and yet having less knowledge than an average user in the same circumstances.
Do you think MS would bait people with a new version of Office and then want to pay for 'free' support calls to get the users back to their original versions? Just from a $$ standpoint, this would be STUPID for MS to do, and why this DOES NOT happen as the submitted story suggests.
Slashdot, this is now to the point where your main articles are making up crap just to try to push the anti-MS FUD.
So what insane
"Don't install evil Vista because my 3yr old ate keys off the keyboard"
"Don't use evil Windows Server, when I installed NT 3.51 Server my audio in doom stopped working"
"Stay away from MS, I drove by their headquarters and bigfoot attacked my car and raped me"
"I am too stupid to breathe most of the time, but after installing Vista, I forgot how to breathe altogether"
"MS forces evil DRM on me in Vista because it has something called protect processes that secures parts of the OS from other processes, and even though it wasn't designed for DRM, idiots like me see it as DRM because we are too f**king stupid to know what we are talking about"
Geesh
Yes, one side is dishonest spin -- the OSS side. Take this article as an example. This has *absolutely nothing* to do, either with the linked article (which details trials on BRAND NEW PCs), or with Office 2007. In my dictionary, this is known as creating fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of any people who might want to try it out. FUD for short.
As an aside: Most of the rambling points about Vista (no new features, less secure than XP, UAC pops up incessantly, for example) are objectively, demonstrably, and almost completely false. When you challenge objective truths, you are either ignorant or malicious. I'd wager the latter.