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Microsoft Readies Ad-Supported Office Starter 2010
Martin writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Microsoft Office Starter 2010 will be not available for purchase; it will only come pre-loaded on new PCs. It includes basic functionality so users can view, edit, and create documents via Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010. Not only are these programs ad-supported, but Microsoft claims they are 'designed for casual Office users,' who apparently will be perfectly fine with reduced-functionality and ad-supported software."
A version of Office with commercials! Woot! Seriously, apps I'll never need or use, and links I'll never click. What a waste of time, energy, and resources.
Oooooh, poor baby MS. Did I hurt their widdle feelings now? Should we refrain from commenting on ANY beta software? Anyway, it's not just me that's panning it.
Stephen Frank said
I’ve been a recreational and professional computer user for, what, 25 years, and I can’t make heads or tails of the user interface on this Office 2010 preview...
Seriously, go look at this thing.
Or how about Scott Feldstein
Sweet jebus noooo! .
Why does Office have to look like you're piloting the friggin' space shuttle?
FWIW, my prediction is that Office 2010 will be the Vista of MS Office suites.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Clippy is back, and he's pushing Viagra right to your desktop.
If I wanted ad supported docs I'd use Google. In fact I prefer it, because its at least up front about the ads.
Google Docs is more than adequate for the casual user.
OpenOffice is still free, and easily able to handle book length documents, huge spreadsheets, etc.
So where does Microsoft think they will find a market for this stuff?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Actually, everyone is familiar with Office 2003 - Office 2007 is a massive UI change, OpenOffice is not. I think my Mum would find the Office 2003 -> OpenOffice transition much easier than Office 2003 -> Office 2007. Heck, even I found myself wasting so much time finding functionality I was familiar with in old versions of Office that I downloaded OpenOffice to use instead!
Adverts coming from an internet server? A quick fix to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts should fix that...
They are ignoring OO.o, this is solely a reaction to Google Docs. See, Microsoft knows its traditional business models of selling bucketloads of Office is on the way out, and they *need* an opportunity for growth (or the shareholders will get even more pissed at them, and Ballmer will not get his bonus... well, won't get as big a bonus as he wants).
So, they see Google just doing what Google does, and making some money from adverts and they see the Google shareprice, ans they think... lets combine the 'cloud', adverts and MS Office and the combination will of course be the perfect storm of money making wonderment. Which, of course, it won't be.
If Google sold Docs so you could run it on a VM inside your corporate firewall, I think they'd destroy the market for Office. Presumably MS are working on this (Sharepoint services for Office or somesuch) that will be taken up, but this current offering is just going to be a footnote on the internet like all the non-Messenger Live tools.
That's what I expected when I moved into my latest job. Turns out that they have heard of it, they just don't use it because it doesn't work as well and generally messed up the format of whatever they opened.
They will occasionally use it if they get obscure file that word won't open though.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!