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Microsoft Unbundles Software For NY City
doishmere writes "Microsoft has agreed to sell individual pieces of software to NY City workers, rather than forcing each seat to buy a full suite of software. The city has created three classes of users based on which pieces of software they need to perform their job, and Microsoft will sell software packages tailored to each class at a reduced price."
The fact that when you open an MS word document and do any editing it fucks it up for everyone else is one reason. One of our meetings went like this
"Who uses open office?"
"silence"
did you forget to take your meds?
TL;DR
Writing long crap and repeating it all over doesn't make it more right.
For your information, in my university, almost everyone uses a Mac - students and teachers. Most of them dual boot or virtualize fedora or ubuntu. I can count with my fingers the number of people running windows. Another interesting fact is that the worst students are the ones running *only* Microsoft Windows.
Oh, and by the way - I run another special flavor of Linux which probably doesn't mean anything to you.
GAO contracts usually have a "most favored customer" clause, meaning that any better offer to another customer is automatically offered to the federal government. I wonder that such terms apply in this case.
Anyway Openoffice solved the problem. There are features that open office does not have, like collaboration, is handled by Google Docs. I had no problem paying MS money until the day when reliability was called into question.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It looks like you're shilling for Microsoft. Would you like to:
* Talk about how Microsoft solutions are enterprise ready
* Bash Google and/or Apple for no apparent reason
* Mention the hidden costs of open source
* Cleverly forget to mention Microsoft disasters such as Bob, the Zune, Windows Mobile, or Vista
Just once I would like to see a +5 accusation of shilling include a solid rebuttal.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I wish Linux and openoffice had been the motivator. Google Apps and gmail
is to be given credit for this one. Microsoft is scared s--tless of google apps because
its catching on in the enterprise where Microsoft's bread and butter is. If
lower tier workers can use google and google apps for 90% of their work then their bosses
will figure out how to shift the other 10% on to others. It also deprives them of revenue
from Outlook when google hosts email on their servers.
I'm old enough to remember when Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, Project, Visio, and whatever else MS is bundling these days as "Office" were simply separate products, which anyone could buy individually.
You still can buy them separately. I was just looking at a pricelist earlier today that showed Word, Excel, Outlook and Access as individual items. If you wanted more than one product then you were much better off buying the cheapest Office package.
Not me. Over the past 30 years, I've gone from pro-MS to agnostic to "avoid when possible" based largely on their software. I just don't like being forced to do things "the Microsoft way". I don't like the way they change stuff from version to version for no apparent reason. I don't like the planned obsolescence. I don't like the way they handle security.
I do like Excel -- or at least, I liked Excel 2000. Not so happy about 2003 or 2007, but Excel is still better from other spreadsheets I've tried. But that's about it.
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