Microsoft Quietly Offering Ad-Funded Version of Works

mikesd81 writes "News.com reports Microsoft has finally started offering an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in some countries. Users who run the software see a small ad as they are writing their document or editing their spreadsheet. Although the program has the ability to update its set of ads online, today it runs mostly ads for Microsoft and a few partners, all of which ship with the product itself. Microsoft remains cagey on the details of where you can find Works SE. The company has been testing Works SE in 5 countries: The United States, France, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdom. It is available only through select computer makers and Microsoft won't say which computer makers those are. However, it seems Sony is offering it in the US."

Comments

Re:worst for portability

[davolfman]

To be honest I'd never suggest it with OpenOffice available in this day and age it just makes no sense. The value of Microsoft products in compatibility and when you can get a more compatible product for less money Works has no reason to exist except for widespread ignorance of the existence of OpenOffice.

Hi, there!

[zmollusc]

"Hello, I am calling you to see if you wanted to advertise on our exciting new advertising medium targetted at skinflints who will use crap rather than fork out any money! Hello? Hello?"

Re:Works?

[David Gerard]

Pfft, have you ever tried opening a complex Office or Word document in Microsoft Office? As awesome a product as it is, it's downright lousy for handling things like image filters and pixel-perfect positioning on Word documents. It tries, yes, and sometimes it does OK, but it's far from perfect. That's because Word actually lays out the page according to the printer driver that happens to be default on that particular PC today. So Word is, quite literally, not compatible with the same version of itself on the same operating system.

Re:Slightly OT: Microsoft Office 2007

[hairyfeet]

Here is MY problem with 07, which was also ONE of my problems with Vista for the two months I ran it (it was also a slow bloated hog, but I digress), anyway here is my problem: What the hell is so hard about having a "classic" mode? I mean, really, with all those programmers would have REALLY have been so hard to put an option to put in into classic mode, say 2000 or XP for Vista and 2000 or 2003 for Office? At least with XP before the Brico Packs and the hacked msstyles came out you could at least switch it to 2K pro with a couple of mouse clicks. Would it really have been so damned difficult to have it revert back to a normal menu?

It just seems to me IMHO that with both 2K7 and Vista MSFT changed a lot of it just to say they'd done something new. And while there are a lot more folks who say they love the ribbon than the new Vista interface (bread crumbs,WTH? What was wrong with the up button?) there are just as many that were happy with the way things were. Unfortunately in MSFT land you have to upgrade to keep support, at least in the business world. That is why at home I'm happily typing this on my Win2K Pro desktop, which with a 1.1Ghz Celeron and 512Mb of RAM ran better than my 3Ghz gamer rig with 2Gb of RAM under Vista, and if I need to edit a document I have Office 2K with uses about 1/5 the system resources of 2K7 and at least for me is a much easier way to get things done.

And while I've got nothing against OO.o and often give it to customers on new builds and will try V-3.0 when it comes out, Office 2K is just IMHO a better product ATM. Even with the hidden OSA9 process turned off on this old machine it is just light years faster and more responsive than OO.o 2.X on Windows. Now on the new machines I build for customers it is snappy as well as on my 3Ghz, but for an older office machine like this it really just drags things down. Maybe I'm just getting old, or MSFT programmers are getting lazy, but IMHO Office 2K + Win2K Pro was about the best they've ever put out and have been going downhill ever since. But that is my 02c,YMMV.