Slashdot Mirror
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."
MS has had online capability for years now where multiple people can open and edit documents at the same time. It was just over the corporate network.
Here's a video explanation of why you shouldn't e-mail documents. I completely agree with it. Creating twenty-five copies of the same document at various revisions is an error-prone habit.
Put identity in the browser.
... 100% compatible ...
Shee-yit, Word isn't 100% compatbile with Word documents ! I frequently need to 'repair' Word 2007 documents before I can re-open them. This of course begs the question, if Word can repair it, why doesn't it just open it ? This question is left as an exercise for the reader.
Strangely, my paid-for Google Docs account doesn't say "Beta" anywhere. I guess it must be only the free version that's beta. Shock! No other company does that. ::rollseyes::
Put identity in the browser.
Go ahead, mod me offtopic, but somebody has to do it. http://begthequestion.info/
Personally I wouldn't trust important documents to stay on the web server. What happens when google goes belly up and starts shutting down their web servers?
You are aware that all Google Docs can be backed up locally with Google Gears and also converted into a number of popular formats?
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
Can I just add a [citation needed] to that "history of easily folding to law enforcement" statement? Last time I checked, they fought harder than Yahoo or Microsoft when they were subpoenaed for search data.
mysql> SELECT * FROM `places` WHERE `place` LIKE 'home`; Empty set (0.00 sec)
Which is different from bribing the disgruntled sys-admin at the company, how?
In many cases even a underpaid, undervalued, overworked EDS 1st line worker can have access to very sensitive data on the customers servers and PC's. I certainly did back in the days when I worked/slaved for them.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Yes you can, Gears will sync the two whenever the link becomes available again - meaning you can edit your docs on the plane, bus, with or without connectivity, etc.
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
If you don't get anywhere with the teacher, you should definately ask the school board to put the topic on your agenda. Formatting instructions should only go so far as to specify point size and font type (i.e., serif, sans-serif). If truly concerned about variances in font size or style, the teacher should distribute an example paragraph that shows the basic font style, line spacing, etc. Minor variances should only bother power-hungry, small-minded individuals who are concerned more about form than they are about substance.
Now, if the students were submitting something for publication (some in-school publication that would not require electronic submission), I can see violating exact formatting specifications being a disqualifier, but that should be handled seperately than any grading that should be examining the student's writing, logic, grammar, and syntax, with only a fraction of points hinging on format.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Doesn't Open Office support .doc files and Times New Roman font?
I think word probably is still the best for most. OpenOffice lacks many of its features and useability. I have used both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office and always end up going back to Microsoft Office. With OpenOffice there are all sorts of little annoyances that start to add up quickly that make it quite unuseable, for instance it would only let me drag position floating boxes and items in a document by increments of roughly twenty pixels. It doesnt have an off document scratch area in the space surrounding the document, etc. There is nothing in OpenOffice that can do what Word or Publisher does.
I also think web applications are horrid and would never use them. I dont even use web e-mail. The reason is it is slow, clumsy, if you lose your internet connection you cant work. Plus you have everything you are doing sent to a server so there is no privacy. No thanks.
Google Docs supports an offline mode. You will likely need to install the Gears plugin for your browser to enable this.
Do not read this
No, not like that, the Google-Apps (writer, spreadsheet, etc.) are downloaded to your PC and you use them from there. So it's still the same mini-office suite that it is on-line and you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference (that is; the move from on-line to off-line mode is seamless). Or you can still just use them through a browser from any PC like you always did. MS/OO/3rd party tools don't come into it.
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
Where did you find MS Word for free?
There you go. Word 5.5 for DOS for free directly from Microsoft:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/word97win/Wd55_be/97/WIN98/EN-US/Wd55_ben.exe
Signature has left the building.
Apparently it's not just Word. I've been having that experience with Windows 7 since the beta was released. I installed it in VirtualBox and have spent the last two days trying to find a way to:
I also despise the Ribbon the more I work with it. Luckily my work hasn't upgraded to the latest Office yet and are still using Office 2003.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The point being why should he be required to go out and purchase a $500 Office suite to comply with a sixth-grade teacher's demands?
What if he didn't have MacOS in the house, only Linux?
As long as the paper meets the content & formatting requirements, the application used to create it should be irrelevant to the teacher. Marking a kid all the way down to a D just for having the wrong font used is petty.
They have a history of easily folding to law enforcement, which makes me uneasy about hosting corporate stuff online.
Actually, I remember google being the ONLY web search company that stood up to the DOJ when they wanted all search data from a random sampling of users. The DOJ was arguing the constitutionality of some "think of the children" legislation about blocking on the internet...
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It does. The OP is obviously braindead. I can understand using another program, but Verdana font? Why change the font? OP just wants to "rock the boat."
I remember when we first got Word at work (long time ago) sitting down and reading things about Styles, numbering and all that. I was working with people doing technical documents who were manually numbering, and I couldn't convince them to learn it, despite all the time they were wasting adjusting numbering.
No, but you can decide at any point to get off the upgrade roundabout and stick with what you've got, or control your own roll-out of new versions.
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
Times New Roman is still part of the Microsoft TrueType Core Fonts. Microsoft removed the download from their site, but they can still be downloaded in an unaltered form.
Sources:
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web