Companies Using MS Word "Out of Habit," Says Forrester

An anonymous reader writes "A Forrester Research report has found that companies use Microsoft Word for word processing out of habit rather than necessity and are beginning to consider other alternatives as the Web has changed the way people create and share documents. The report, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do: The Microsoft Word Love Story," by analyst Sheri McLeish, suggests that businesses may still be using Word because it is familiar to users or because they have a legacy investment in the application, not because it is the best option." Microsoft surely knows that some other options are creeping slowly into the view of even the most Word-centric users, though. User I dream about smoking writes "Microsoft is testing new capabilities for Office Live Workspace, its online adjunct to Microsoft Office, that will make it a closer rival to online application suites such as Google Docs. Microsoft will start beta testing an updated version of Live Workspace later this year that allows users to create and edit new documents online."

Comments

I use Microsoft to fight the evil G$$Gle empire

[Anonymous Coward]

I am against huge monopolies controlling everything we do on our computers with their close sourced spy crapware. Down with the G$$G-borg! Fight for Microsoft! Up with freedom!

Microsoft Word is an amazingly innovative and capable program. It does everything I need with an intuitive interface that even your grandmother could use, but is l33t enough for the geekiest power user. Plus, it's free! All power to Microsoft, fight the evil corporate empires!!!!

Re:I use Microsoft to fight the evil G$$Gle empire

[serviscope_minor]

And when did it's interface become intuitive?

Press a key on the keyboard and a similarly shaped glyph appears on the screen. That's pretty intuitive. It's also about as far as most people make it.

Wow

[somersault]

analyst Sheri McLeish, suggests that businesses may still be using [insert-any-application-here] because it is familiar to users or because they have a legacy investment in the application, not because it is the best option

What an amazing insight! Who would have suspected such a thing?

Re:Wow

[Samschnooks]

Shhhhhh!

I work for a large international IT research firm and I just comb Slashdot, filtering for only +5 comments, and then plagiarize what I see and put it in my report.

The sucky part is, when I first started, I forgot to filter out the "+5 Funny" comments. So, in my reports, you'd see "In Soviet Russia, Ms Word You!" and "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of MS Word" and so on. I got fired from my first job. But I got it down now.

I have never liked word.

[mbone]

I always feel I am fighting it to get it to do what I want. If I wanted to fight computers, I would buy computer games.

Re:Of course its out of habit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Microsoft Office (especially Powerpoint, but also Excel and Word) are "better" than Open Office.

Lots of thins are better than Open Office. But come'on, "especially Powerpoint"? WTF are you smoking? Powerpoint better than something?

The Flu is better than Powerpoint.

Re:Googles playbook

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I'll stick with the vi editor. It's way easeir^H^H^HDAMNIT:q!