Microsoft Phasing Out Office Starter Edition

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Microsoft Phasing Out Office Starter Edition

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 22, 2012 @04:02PM from the decreasing-bloatware dept.

nk497 writes "Microsoft has started phasing out its Office 2010 Starter edition, ahead of the arrival of Windows 8. Office Starter was included in the OEM pre-installation kit (OPK) of software sent to manufacturers, and included ad-supported versions of Word and Excel, but not Outlook or PowerPoint. That will be replaced with an Office 2010 Transition OPK, which will instead push users to download a trial of the Office suite and offer a link to buy the full version. The free Office Web Apps will also be available for users not wanting the full version."

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Who cares? by ozmanjusri · 2012-06-22 16:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

They're just marketing tools. Nobody actually uses them.

--
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
1. Re:Who cares? by sdnoob · 2012-06-22 16:22 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  actually, a lot of people use office starter, even in soho environments.. and that's microsoft's "problem", it was cutting into sales. not enough people actually *buying* their overpriced office products.
  plus, some clever folks online have figured out how to install starter on any newer (vista or seven, i think) pc.
2. Re:Who cares? by Zondar · 2012-06-22 16:22 · Score: 1
  
  Did you mean the programs, or the employees of Microsoft?
3. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 16:42 · Score: 0
  
  I use it. And it's pretty good. I also use the "cloud" stuff they have. I know it's not rockstar, but it's free, and it works.
4. Re:Who cares? by Tough+Love · 2012-06-22 16:55 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Libreoffice cares, that's who. This boneheaded move by Microsoft will be good for at least doubling the downloads.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
5. Re:Who cares? by jesseck · 2012-06-22 17:05 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  That's correct... I've done the same with people I know that have purchased a new computer. I tell them to use Office Starter, save some money, and *if* they find they need more features or Outlook, they can install Office after purchasing a license key card. They save money at first, and I can only think of one instance (of about 10) where the user had to purchase Office after the fact.
6. Re:Who cares? by couchslug · 2012-06-22 17:05 · Score: 0
  
  No shit!
  THIS is News For Nerds?
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
7. Re:Who cares? by hawguy · 2012-06-22 17:36 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  actually, a lot of people use office starter, even in soho environments.. and that's microsoft's "problem", it was cutting into sales. not enough people actually *buying* their overpriced office products.
  plus, some clever folks online have figured out how to install starter on any newer (vista or seven, i think) pc.
  Overpriced? Office Home + Student costs around $99 OEM version (includes Word + Excel + Powerpoint + OneNote). That seems like a pretty reasonable price.
8. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 17:38 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed. And now I dont have to uninstall that junk prior to installing LibreOffice for friends and family.
9. Re:Who cares? by sortius_nod · 2012-06-22 17:47 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Doesn't beat free, which is the point here.
10. Re:Who cares? by hcs_$reboot · 2012-06-22 18:02 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Office Home + Student costs around $99 OEM version (includes Word + Excel + Powerpoint + OneNote). That seems like a pretty reasonable price.
  You're used to it seemingly :-( Software took another turn recently... The new Mac OS Mountain Lion costs $20 for instance.
  
  --
  Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
11. Re:Who cares? by Bert64 · 2012-06-22 18:18 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  It's not wether msoffice is worth $99 as a whole, it's wether it offers $99 of benefit over and above libreoffice or the free version of office starter... Chances are that for most people it does not, making it overpriced.
  
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  http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
12. Re:Who cares? by DigiShaman · 2012-06-22 18:23 · Score: 2
  
  That's just for the first hit. Where Apple will really make hand over fist in money will be at the App store and iTunes.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
13. Re:Who cares? by donaldm · 2012-06-22 18:36 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Libreoffice cares, that's who. This boneheaded move by Microsoft will be good for at least doubling the downloads.
  I use Libreoffice on my Linux laptop (Fedora 17) and actually do collaborative work with people who use Microsoft Office. Unfortunately I do have to produce xml, docx or doc files so the people who use Microsoft Office can read them which is easy for me to do. Usually most people I work with don't even know I run pure open source software and even if they see my screen think it is some professional version of Microsoft Widows which their company has not upgraded to yet. I do explain when asked but most people I work with have company laptops and are pretty much locked into a Microsoft environment.
  
  --
  There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
14. Re:Who cares? by EdIII · 2012-06-22 19:55 · Score: 1
  
  Come on guys...
  I love open source, and hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but $99 is not over priced. $300,$500, and more is over priced.
  Considering the features, complexity, and maturity of the product it's very hard to say it is not worth $100 if you want something nice. LibreOffice is okay, and quite usable, but there are still some things I like Office for.
  The IDEs and software tools that I have are more than $99.
  If you want to see something way over priced try looking at Adobe.
15. Re:Who cares? by Gadget_Guy · 2012-06-22 20:06 · Score: 2
  
  Software took another turn recently... The new Mac OS Mountain Lion costs $20 for instance.
  And for a more appropriate comparison than an upgrade of a 12 month old version of an OS, iWork costs $79.
16. Re:Who cares? by Teun · 2012-06-22 20:29 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed.
  For home and word processor use LibreOffice is quite sufficient.
  When you need it professionally there's little that beats MS Excel and $99.- is a good investment.
  A full licence for private use would be silly, both from the point of options never used and the price point.
  
  --
  "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
17. Re:Who cares? by temcat · 2012-06-22 21:28 · Score: 1
  
  It's strictly non-commercial use, no?
18. Re:Who cares? by oiron · 2012-06-22 21:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Or $20 each for the individual apps on the App Store...
  Which seems better, because many people I know would use one or two, but not all three...
19. Re:Who cares? by oiron · 2012-06-22 21:43 · Score: 1
  
  As an individual, I may make a different decision; for example, there may be things that Office is better at, which I don't care about. Price wins over features I don't need.
  But yeah, $99 is not really overpriced, if there's anything in that which you care about.
20. Re:Who cares? by hairyfeet · 2012-06-22 22:11 · Score: 1, Interesting
  
  Well I think the real point is if you need MS Office? You'll buy it and if you don't then you won't, simple as that.
  I can see why MSFT did this, since it seems Word is used by more people than anything else in MS Office, but they really need to be worried about giving up the home users because $99 for Student is just too high. That is why I just give my home users LO because frankly it'll do what the average home user needs even though it won't cut it for the business users but they should be worried about home users using LO instead of MS Office because that is just money left on the table.
  If it were me I'd sell Word for $30, or a Word PPT combo for $45, lower student to $60 and pick up that money they are leaving on the table. because as it is they aren't gonna get those that were using an ad supported MS Office to go run out and spend $100+ on MS Office, they'll use LO or the pirated version. But frankly with all the dumbshit moves we've seen from MSFT lately yet another one? Not surprising.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
21. Re:Who cares? by TheRaven64 · 2012-06-22 22:14 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  $99 is not much if for a piece of software that you use as an important part of your job. $99 is a lot for a thing that you use occasionally at home. The problem is that since discontinuing MS Works, Microsoft doesn't really have a product for people in the latter category. They'll end up using Google Docs, Open/LibreOffice or some other competitor's product and then one of the big advantages of MS Office - that everyone uses it and so training costs are low - is reduced.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
22. Re:Who cares? by Aggrajag · 2012-06-22 22:24 · Score: 1
  
  I bought a desktop for our nursing station at work. The requirement was: "as cheap as possible" so I got them a basic HP desktop with Windows 7 and Office Starter. Add to that Windows Live Mail and Powerpoint Viewer and everything works perfectly and looks like a regular office PC.
  Nursing home where I work at the moment has a extremely tight budget and the money we have goes to taking care of the patients.
23. Re:Who cares? by UnknowingFool · 2012-06-22 22:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  Really? Apple's Q2 Financials
  In Millions:
  
  Mac Desktops (1)(9): 1,936
  Mac Portables (2)(9): 4,662
  iPod (3)(9): 2,528
  Other Music Related Products and Services (4): 2,027
  iPhone and Related Products and Services (5)(9): 24,417
  iPad and Related Products and Services (6)(9): 9,153
  Peripherals and Other Hardware (7): 766
  Software, Service and Other Sales (8): 844
  (1) Includes revenue from iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro sales.
  (2) Includes revenue from MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro sales.
  (3) Includes revenue from iPod sales.
  (4) Includes revenue from sales from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore in addition to sales of iPod services and Apple-branded and third-party iPod accessories.
  (5) Includes revenue from sales of iPhone, iPhone services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPhone accessories.
  (6) Includes revenue from sales of iPad, iPad services, and Apple-branded and third-party iPad accessories.
  (7) Includes revenue from sales of displays, networking product, and other hardware.
  (8) Includes revenue from sales of Apple-branded and third-party Mac software, and services.
  (9) Includes amortization of related revenue deferred for non-software services and embedded software upgrade rights.
  Apple makes almost as much money in iPod (2.5) hardware than they make in Apps, Media, and software sales (2.0+ 0.8) combined. The iTunes revenue also includes iPod accessories as well. And any revenue from the App or Media or Mac App store to Apple is only 30% of reported revenue as they have to give the original content owner their 70% cut first. Bottom line: Apple makes most of their money from hardware. This isn't hard to look up.
  --
  Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
24. Re:Who cares? by ericloewe · 2012-06-22 23:04 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Home and Student, with three licenses, is usually ~100€. Around 30€ per license is a very good deal for anyone who doesn't use it for "revenue-generating activities". If you need something beyond Word, Exce, Powerpoint and OneNote, you can buy the individual program (in practice, two licenses - one for a desktop and one for a laptop/tablet).
25. Re:Who cares? by mjwx · 2012-06-22 23:26 · Score: 1
  
  actually, a lot of people use office starter, even in soho environments.. and that's microsoft's "problem", it was cutting into sales. not enough people actually *buying* their overpriced office products.
  plus, some clever folks online have figured out how to install starter on any newer (vista or seven, i think) pc.
  Yep, I used Office Starter when it came with my personal laptop, it was pre-installed. That laptop got stolen and the replacement didn't have Office Starter, I'm back to using Open Office as all I need on that laptop is to open a few .doc or .xls files and maybe do something simple like write a letter or do a personal budget. Not worth paying A$300 for an office license.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
26. Re:Who cares? by PenquinCoder · 2012-06-22 23:54 · Score: 1
  
  $99 for a partial Office suite, could be seen as a good investment. Until next year, when your new investment is no longer compatible with the latest OS/hardware shit being pushed. Then it's another $99 to upgrade. (Rinse, Repeat.)
27. Re:Who cares? by PenquinCoder · 2012-06-22 23:59 · Score: 1
  
  Do you use your Fedora install in an AD Enviroment and get proper resource/permission/authentication? What packages properly handle the translation from AD permissions to the Linux level of permissions? Only projects I' can find for AD on Linux are old as RMS himself, or too expensive for one laptop out of 400 in a company.
28. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 00:04 · Score: 0
  
  "When you need it professionally there's little that beats MS Excel and $99.- is a good investment."
  It's funny but also 99% of the people use Excel to do lists of people or other stuff and never ever calculate something with it. That's not very professional.
29. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 00:08 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Most of us aren't students.
30. Re:Who cares? by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 00:19 · Score: 1
  
  I love open source, and hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but $99 is not over priced.
  [citation needed]
  The most credible alternative costs $0. It's difficult to argue that $99 is not overpriced.
  
  Considering the features, complexity, and maturity of the product
  Features: If Libreoffice doesn't have it, that's probably because statistically no one uses it. Complexity: Seriously? How much of the complexity is due to unnecessary convolution? Maturity: Uh no. They keep changing things and then it's not mature any more.
  
  If you want to see something way over priced try looking at Adobe.
  It's a matter of supply and demand. There's no supply of competition for Adobe (GIMP gets closer all the time but the usability is still behind IMO) so the demand for Adobe products is high. There is an adequate supply of competition for Office (many users will find Gnumeric and Abiword to be an acceptable substitute, let alone all of Libreoffice) so the demand is relatively low.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
31. Re:Who cares? by whargoul · 2012-06-23 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  Ok...what about Base? The last time I used it it was an unusable pile of crap that had no interoperability between other systems or file formats. No import, barely an export (if it had any at all) no connecting to outside sources what-so-ever. MS Access is the ONLY reason I still consider purchasing Office, not for its database functionality (which is fine) but because it can connect to just about anything on the planet.
32. Re:Who cares? by hairyfeet · 2012-06-23 01:53 · Score: 1
  
  Uhhh...I run MS Office 2K on Win 7 X64 and with the compatibility pack i can open 2K7 (and I assume 2K10 but I don't know anybody with 2K10 so can't test) MS office files just fine.
  You can bitch at MSFT about a lot of things but backwards compatibility? NOT one of them. MS office 2K runs like a dream on on Win 7 X64 and is insanely fast.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
33. Re:Who cares? by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 02:30 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, although anyone creating an Access app is a tool and every Access app is an abortion on a plate, Access is a "valid" reason to buy some pro edition of Office. Mostly to open legacy apps, because let's face it, you're much better off with a standards-based webapp and it's not much harder to make one what with all the CMSes out there today.
  However, virtually no home user needs Access. For virtually anything the home user would do with Access, there's a superior standalone app.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
34. Re:Who cares? by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-06-23 02:56 · Score: 2
  
  just as long as they never start using MS Works. that is an oxymoron if i ever saw one.
  
  --
  ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
35. Re:Who cares? by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-06-23 03:09 · Score: 1
  
  same here i used office 97 until i switched to OO.o/LO. installed and ran fine. it is one of the ms products that fallowed all of the rules and uses more or less unchanged interfaces same ironically with ms bob which i got board in windows server class and installed on windows server 03.
  
  --
  ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
36. Re:Who cares? by westlake · 2012-06-23 04:56 · Score: 1
  
  they really need to be worried about giving up the home users because $99 for Student is just too high.
  MS Office Home and Student for Windows and OSX consistently tops the software bestseller lists at Amazon.com, Walmart.com, etc., etc., etc. The price of the Home edition has never been an obstacle to sales.
  
  OneNote is one of the overlooked gems in recent versions of Microsoft Office. OneNote makes it simple to take notes and keep track of everything with integrated search, and offers more features than its popular competitor Evernote. One way it is better is its high quality optical character recognition (OCR) engine. One of Evernote's most popular features is that you can search for anything, including text in an image, and you can easily find it. OneNote takes this further, and instantly OCRs any text in images you add. Then, you can use this text easily and copy it from the image.
  OCR anything with OneNote 2007 and 2010
  Most buy the three-seat version of Office Home, retail boxed.
  Office University Edition is $99 at Walmart,com (Word. Excel. Publisher. OneNote. Outlook. Publisher. Access.) Student ID required.
  If you use Office at work the chances are quite good that MS Office Pro can be yours for $9.95. Microsoft Home Use Program
  MS Office Home will ship with every WinRT tablet.
  The truth is that the real cost of an office suite is in consumables. Ink, toner and paper.
  Free software saves you next to nothing.
37. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 05:26 · Score: 0
  
  You still need to buy an overpriced computer to get your os at that price. Besides, didn't they used to to charge $36? Apple doesn't charge very much for os updates, they never have.
38. Re:Who cares? by EdIII · 2012-06-23 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  [citation needed]
  The most credible alternative costs $0. It's difficult to argue that $99 is not overpriced.
  Citations about my personal feelings, or that it is over priced? That's difficult to provide a citation for either way. I am not aware of any authorities on the over pricing of products that I can reference their publications or studies.
  My point is you can't compare against free if you are talking about over priced. When we say over priced, we are not referring to some economics term, but the feeling that Microsoft is over charging us for something simply because they can, and that the product is not nearly worth that price.
  If you are going to continue comparing against free, than 1c is over priced compared to 0c. There is no meaningful difference between 99c, $5, and $1000 in that context.
  Let's say there were a couple of competitors with Microsoft with offerings for $10-$15 and they were all roughly equivalent in performance and features. It might then be argued that Office is over priced at $99.
  That does not exist though. In fact, the only other commercial offering of standalone software that I am aware of is Corel WordPerfect that starts at $249!
  I'm sorry, it just seems silly to me to say that all software is over priced if it asks for even a pittance more than a free offering. You really should not be comparing free against paid that way.
  I have been installing Open Office and Libre Office for quite some time now, but it is not because I tell people that Microsoft is over priced.
39. Re:Who cares? by spasm · 2012-06-23 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not the parent poster but I've also been using openoffice/libreoffice on a linux laptop in a predominantly microsoft environment since ~ 2001 without any meaningful problems. Whatever authentication method ID is using for network connectivity and access to shared folders seems to be being handled perfectly gracefully by my distro (mint at the moment, following ubuntu, suse, redhat) without me knowing or caring what it is. Admittedly my employers across that time period have been large research universities where people use all sorts of random OS/hardware combinations, so if IT set up a system so dependent on one commercial company's permissions/network architecture that it created problems for anyone not using that company's particular and limited collection of OS's they'd all be fired..
40. Re:Who cares? by Dr.+Evil · 2012-06-23 06:10 · Score: 1
  
  You're not allowed to use Home and Student for part of your job.
  Office Home and Business is $249 per machine.
41. Re:Who cares? by Grishnakh · 2012-06-23 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  When LibreOffice is free and does most of the same stuff, $99 sounds like a rip-off to me. I can do a lot of things with $99; why should I spend it on some office software that I rarely use?
  Go to China and ask the factory workers there if USD$99 sounds like a "reasonable" price to them.
42. Re:Who cares? by Grishnakh · 2012-06-23 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  MS Office Home and Student for Windows and OSX consistently tops the software bestseller lists at Amazon.com, Walmart.com, etc., etc., etc. The price of the Home edition has never been an obstacle to sales.
  You don't know that, because you don't know how many people didn't buy it because of the high price. For all we know, if they cut the price in half, four times as many people might buy it. Yes, it might be a bestseller, but it's also something that most people with a computer think they need to have, even if it's "just in case". Most other software items (except OSes and browsers) are things that only a fraction of computer users will need or want.
  The truth is that the real cost of an office suite is in consumables. Ink, toner and paper.
  Only if you have a printer, and actually print stuff. Some people just don't need to print things much, and others just save it up and print it out at work on their employer's dime. If you're talking lower-income people or especially students, they'll frequently go to lengths like this to save money. $99 is a lot of money for a struggling student; not all of them are trust-fund babies.
43. Re:Who cares? by zippthorne · 2012-06-23 12:34 · Score: 1
  
  For the students for which $99 is too much to pay, Microsoft maintains their mindshare through pirated versions...
  
  --
  Can you be Even More Awesome?!
44. Re:Who cares? by Tough+Love · 2012-06-23 21:41 · Score: 1
  
  What packages properly handle the translation from AD permissions to the Linux level of permissions?
  Samba4 is what you're looking for.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
45. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-24 05:01 · Score: 0
  
  or you could just use google apps and not pay anything, have access to your data from anywhere and be able to edit from any computer. (Without fear of data loss to add) :) That seems more reasonable to me.
46. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-25 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  What packages properly handle the translation from AD permissions to the Linux level of permissions?
  Likewise. Works great logging a Linux box to an AD.
I couldn't resist. Sorry. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 16:21 · Score: 0

"I'll just leave this here...."
http://www.libreoffice.org/
1. Re:I couldn't resist. Sorry. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 16:22 · Score: 1
  
  Every single person on slashdot knows that exists. And yet, no one cares.
Trying to get sales back? by PlusFiveTroll · 2012-06-22 16:22 · Score: 2

Lost office sales must have convinced them to do this as a way to push people to cloud services, once they're on the cloud MS can find some way to wring cash out of them. I've seen a large number of people that just need Word and Excel use the Starter and never buy a full version, that can't be good for the earnings.
1. Re:Trying to get sales back? by Riceballsan · 2012-06-22 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  Very possible, but I think this will backfire. Bill Gates stance on people using MS software for free, was smarter (I believe gates had a statement along the lines of "I would rather people pirate windows XP than use the competition. Something that is much more real of a competition, as people for whom office starter is good enough for, Google docs is probably also good enough for. Pushing people to the cloud, isn't the best idea when microsoft isn't winning the war in the cloud.
2. Re:Trying to get sales back? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 17:22 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, too bad it's Balmer who reign supreme now.
3. Re:Trying to get sales back? by rtfa-troll · 2012-06-22 19:09 · Score: 1
  Lost office sales must have convinced them to do this as a way to push people to cloud services, once they're on the cloud MS can find some way to wring cash out of them.......
  Oooh ooh ooh.. Classic Slashdot business plan. I know this one:
  
  1. build web office suite
  
  2. get lots of people using it for free
  
  3. ????
  
  4. profit
  
  Next Microsoft will be releasing Office under a GPLv3 compatible copyleft license!!!
  --
  =~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
4. Re:Trying to get sales back? by lister+king+of+smeg · 2012-06-23 03:31 · Score: 1
  Lost office sales must have convinced them to do this as a way to push people to cloud services, once they're on the cloud MS can find some way to wring cash out of them.......
  Oooh ooh ooh.. Classic Slashdot business plan. I know this one:
  1. build web office suite
  2. get lots of people using it for free
  3. ????
  4. profit
  Next Microsoft will be releasing Office under a GPLv3 compatible copyleft license!!!
  lets see ads pay, or charge for extra features.
  --
  ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
But it's replaced by equally annoying crapware by solarissmoke · 2012-06-22 16:24 · Score: 1

Reading the headline I though that would mean one less piece of rubbish to remove from the system after buying it... it's a shame that isn't the case.
1. Re:But it's replaced by equally annoying crapware by Patch86 · 2012-06-22 22:13 · Score: 1
  
  Worse rubbish by the sounds of it. At least Office Starter was a useful, usable piece of software. It sounds like they're replacing it with shovelware that does nothing but pester you to give it your credit card or go to some free web-app suite.
  I only hope to high heaven that it's easy to uninstall (not dug in deeper than an Internet Explorer flavoured burrowing tick).
why not have works come back? by Joe_Dragon · 2012-06-22 16:25 · Score: 1

why not have works come back?
1. Re:why not have works come back? by nzac · 2012-06-22 16:32 · Score: 2
  
  Probably because whatever works would be today would be made redundant by LO.
  It would just result in works being compared to LO like IE is compared to Chrome or Firefox. They would be giving people an excuse to bash MS. Plus they would loose sales to those who don't need anything more.
Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 16:38 · Score: 0

90% of pre-installed software
And fuck that shitty replacement software for builtin things (intel I am looking at you with your wifi stuff)
1. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by fostware · 2012-06-22 17:26 · Score: 1
  
  I don't see anything but "shitty replacement software for builtin thing" showing the AP you're currently connected to via CCX extensions (Intel, Broadcom), re-distributable WPA2 PSK profiles that are more immune to syphoning by regedit and a quick decrypt once applied (Intel), built-in multi-channel wifi survey and wifi interference measurements (Broadcom), inbuilt TDR for cable measurement and broken/crossed wire tests (Intel, Broadcom, Marvell and Realtek).
  As for the shovelware? Yep. That definitely needs to go...
  
  --
  "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
2. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by Shikaku · 2012-06-22 17:28 · Score: 2
  
  Computer Manufacturers do that because it pays them. They get money that drives the cost down of the computer so you get a better price I mean they get more money. If it bothers you that much it's called format it and do it yourself.
  PS: just build the computer yourself you lazy ass, it isn't that hard. PPS: if you don't want to do that all you need is a license key, you can format it yourself and download the iso from something like this: http://lifehacker.com/5832896/download-windows7-isos-to-reinstall-without-restoring-your-system
3. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by dutchwhizzman · 2012-06-22 18:41 · Score: 1
  
  If it bothers you that much it's called format it and do it yourself
  You lose your warranty on the software if you do that. Since it's an OEM version, MicroSoft doesn't support it, only provides updates and calls it Genuine, but you can't get a support contract on it or even call them for your "three free calls" or however much it is these days. If you buy a retail license or get a volume license as a company, then only do you get support, but only if you install that windows version. Mind you, if you decide to go that way, the hardware vendor won't support your driver problems, unless you get a separate support contract for that.
  Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now what was it about linux and support again?
  
  --
  I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
4. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by IKnwThePiecesFt · 2012-06-22 19:02 · Score: 1
  
  I don't think there's a software warranty on a machine even with the factory load, is there?
5. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by CheshireDragon · 2012-06-22 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  IF you do it yourself then you are likely technical enough to fix most issues yourself. That's how it works for me. I fix all my issues...IF I ever have any, because I do it right the first time.
  
  --
  "That's right...I said it."
6. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by Patch86 · 2012-06-22 22:15 · Score: 1
  
  Honestly, how does it make HP any money to turn off the built-in Windows wifi manager on a new laptop and replace it with one that they've written themselves? Nobody pays them for it, and man-hours to code these things aren't free.
7. Re:Can they get rid of that shitty OEM trials too by zippthorne · 2012-06-23 12:50 · Score: 1
  
  Well, you do need two computers depending on the problem - the one you're fixing and the one you're googling with, but yeah, basically everything comes down to
  1) Google to see if any one else has had this problem and what they did
  2) Someone did, do that stuff.
  For drivers, it's just a matter of
  1) did you download a new version that broke something? find the old version and reinstall that
  2) is there a new version that fixes your problem? download and install it.
  3) wait for 2 to be true, or enough time passes that they're probably not going to put out another patch and buy new hardware.
  I'm curious as to what additional support people think they're going to get from the basic support from an OEM or even Microsoft other than the having someone at a computer do the above over the phone and relay instructions to you. You're certainly not going to get online with one of the engineers to turn on debug features and step through your drivers or whatever over your $400 Best Buy Bargain. The best you can hope for is for your issue to be added to a bug reporting database, and enough other people having reported it that someone actually does correct it for the next driver release, in which case, you're back to step 3 again anyway.
  
  --
  Can you be Even More Awesome?!
How useful is Office, really? by bzipitidoo · 2012-06-22 17:26 · Score: 2, Informative

I have LibreOffice of course, but don't actually use it much. Word processing seems antiquated. I use text editors and browsers for my writing. Most of my writing is programs, documentation, posts, and emails, not letters. Good riddance to all those empty forms one is expected to know and follow in letter writing.
Spreadsheets are sometimes useful. But I often find programming languages more flexible for heavy duty calculation.
If I do a lecture, I work from notes and use a chalkboard or a whiteboard. One problem with a presentation is it's too static and linear. Fairly easy to skip stuff your audience already knows, but not so easy to whip up new slides on the spot for the other way around. A talk is constrained enough for a slide show, but that also makes them of limited value. Everyone has been in useless, boring meetings dominated by PowerPoint presentations.
What else do office suites do? 3rd rate database management, drawings, and...?

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Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
1. Re:How useful is Office, really? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 18:07 · Score: 1
  
  What else do office suites do? 3rd rate database management, drawings, and...?
  If you got a slutty secretary in that office suite, there are plenty of things that it can do.
2. Re:How useful is Office, really? by flimflammer · 2012-06-22 18:37 · Score: 0
  
  Yikes. Seriously? I don't even know where to start with this post.
3. Re:How useful is Office, really? by DigiShaman · 2012-06-22 18:42 · Score: 3
  
  You're running solo and expecting everyone else to do the same. Wrong way of understanding the masses. Although because it works for you, and really well, by all means continue to do what you do.
  Business around the world need a set of tools to act as a common denominator. An Office suite is a popular method. It allows for any employee to come and go out of a company with little downtime to transition in learning a new documentation scheme. Excel files can become massively complex with formulas and macros. Word files become excessively complex when rendering a 500+ page report deliverable to clients as a way of selling research and other interpretation data. Often including all sorts of markups and embedded photos. These files will need to be viewed by all parties involved with little fuss and ease of printing and editing.
  Oh, and you're running some heavy duty calculations, Mathcad is worth looking into. The licensing is uber expensive, and yet companies pay hand over fist for them. I can guarantee you, it has nothing to do with being ignorant of other options on the table.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
4. Re:How useful is Office, really? by dutchwhizzman · 2012-06-22 18:51 · Score: 1
  
  It's useful for medium sized mailings (merging), document revisions where multiple people work on it consecutively, working in company templates and making graphs and forecasts and such. Sure, for each of these things there is specialized software available that will do it better than the office suite. The reason why it's there and why it's so ubiquitous is that it's there and "everyone" can use it.
  You start with a simple document, decide you want feature X that you haven't used before and it's there, in the software already. Never used pivot tables, but it's all you need to do what you want in the spreadsheet that already has your data? Learn pivot tables and you don't need to convert your data to another application. Want to send the same letter, personalized, to 100 people? Learn how to merge your address book with the text processor and you have just saved yourself buying and learning a mail generating and printing solution.
  What really surprises me is the popularity of the presentation software in these bundles. Without exception, their layout facilities are at par with banner mania on MS-DOS PCs, their graphic editing tools are worse than the average 5 year old with a box of crayons can achieve and their text/font capabilities are thwarted by the same banner mania software. If it wasn't for the funky slideshow with effects, there would be absolutely no practical use for those applications whatsoever.
  
  --
  I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
5. Re:How useful is Office, really? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 19:44 · Score: 0
  
  You clearly haven't used OneNote.
  It organizes... everything.
6. Re:How useful is Office, really? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 03:56 · Score: 0
  
  These files will need to be viewed by all parties involved with little fuss and ease of printing and editing.
  pdf that shit?
7. Re:How useful is Office, really? by vandamme · 2012-07-04 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  So why not use a real standard, the Open Document??
Awesome news for LibreOffice by Qubit · 2012-06-22 17:27 · Score: 5, Informative

If Microsoft doesn't want to cater to this audience, LibreOffice is more than happy to step up and provide a high-quality, powerful, free (and Free) office suite.
I've installed LibreOffice on dozens of machines, and many friends of mine now rely on it for opening a variety of files that MS-Office can't (or won't) open for them. It'd be great to hear from any OEMs who are considering installing it as a part of the base package on their machines.

--

coding is life /* the rest is */
1. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by hcs_$reboot · 2012-06-22 18:17 · Score: 2
  
  To be fair, and unfortunately, I receive sometimes MS office-made files that look different in Libre/Open Office. I don't really care on a personal touch (usually it's some slight design problems), but on the professional side the files often have to be the same, and I cannot complain (to a client) "don't use this feature" or "save as office 2003"...
  
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2. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by flimflammer · 2012-06-22 18:38 · Score: 2
  
  OEMs will pre-install LibreOffice on machines as long as LibreOffice pays them to do it. Which will never happen.
3. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by Teun · 2012-06-22 20:43 · Score: 1
  
  A word processor is in my view meant to create documents, they are then presented via a printer or maybe pdf.
  I don't expect my audience or client to edit my documents.
  
  --
  "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
4. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 21:57 · Score: 0
  
  I would agree with powerful and free, but high-quality it is not. I hate having to use Microsoft Word for relatively basic purposes (CV, short academic papers etc), but LibreOffice still hasn't got the basics right. This is to the point where it is awkward and slow to use. Believe me when I say I have tried LibreOffice - I have probably downloaded about 12 different versions over the years and it is still not up to scratch, and again I am talking about basic features. Because Office 2010 does not work on Wine, this is also preventing my transition to Linux, which I have been trying to do repeatedly over the last 10 years.
  At one point I even bought a legitimate copy of Office 2010 (for emergencies) but refused to install it so that I could force myself to use LibreOffice. I lasted 3 days before the frustration became too much to bear.
  Out of the hundreds of examples, I give you one, which to me is enough to make the $100 price of Office worth it. Try this in LibreOffice:
  * Create a multipage document eg 6 pages
  * Try and select 3 pages worth of text using Shift-PgDn
5. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 23:23 · Score: 0
  
  Multipage - select 3 pages wrth with shift-pgdn
  That worked for me. What exactly are you complaining about.
6. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 00:15 · Score: 1
  
  I don't expect my audience or client to edit my documents.
  Metric shitloads of companies expect documents in doc format. This is stupid but it is also the way they do business and if you want to do business with them (including applying for a job) you will need to speak .doc.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by drooling-dog · 2012-06-23 00:40 · Score: 1
  
  LibreOffice handles .doc files (both input and output) just fine, in my experience. Most of what I do with it goes out either as .doc or .pdf with no problems.
8. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by drinkypoo · 2012-06-23 00:53 · Score: 1
  
  Since even office doesn't always properly load office documents, I have a hard time believing that libreoffice will handle them all correctly.
  Boring, simple documents will work fine. Anything else may be altered subtly.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
9. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by DrEldarion · 2012-06-23 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  It's better than the alternative of having to pay Microsoft (and charge customers more) for a copy of Office, isn't it?
10. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by Dr_Barnowl · 2012-06-23 07:42 · Score: 1
  
  It's not "Sometimes" in my experience, the vast majority of Word documents I receive look substantially different to their intended rendering in LibreOffice. Which I find to be a shame. I usually dare not edit them and send them back because I fear that it will ruin the layout. Happily the work-issue laptop is Windows + Office. I get my productive work done on Linux and read documents on Windows.
  Since I don't really care about the layout, it doesn't bother me too much - I'm more interested in source code. The compiler doesn't care which font I choose.
11. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by rubycodez · 2012-06-23 16:38 · Score: 1
  
  He's a fucking whiner who spent hours of time learning Microsoft crap because he blew cash on it, but wouldn't take five minutes to learn how to do those simple operations in LibreOffice, which of course are trivial. There is no helping stupid.
12. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by squiggleslash · 2012-06-24 08:19 · Score: 1
  
  This is completely absurd. I do more stuff than that in LibreOffice (actually OO.org, but same difference - LibreOffice isn't likely to have regressed) on a regular basis.
  This sounds suspiciously like the "I tried installing Lunix but I had to tweak the IRQ settings in the BIOS for it to recognize my graphics card" complaints - complete rubbish, and frankly, more likely to apply to installing a modern Microsoft OS on an older PC than any modern GNU/Linux distribution.
  Please stop posting such crap.
  
  --
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13. Re:Awesome news for LibreOffice by drooling-dog · 2012-06-26 06:48 · Score: 1
  
  Can't claim it handles "all" .doc files correctly, because I only generate/read a tiny, tiny fraction of all that exist. But, it (and OpenOffice before it) has worked well for me, on documents ranging from simple 1-pagers to 80-page grant proposals. MS Office may render them "subtly" different, as you say, but since I'm not running both office suites side-by-side I'd be unlikely to notice. The fact that I always have the full and latest version at no cost doesn't hurt, either!
  A huge amount of money is riding on people not believing that, however.
Few people want to buy it by MichaelSmith · 2012-06-22 17:48 · Score: 1

My wife has been running open office on linux and macos for years. Recently when she needed a copy of microsoft office she reacted with incredulity when she found out that our son's laptop (which came with windows) doesn't have microsoft office.

--
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Torin+Darkflight · 2012-06-22 17:58 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'll say right off, I actually use Office Starter for my SOHO work. I know this post is gonna get voted down simply for that reason, regardless of how insightful or informative this post ends up being. But, as someone who has no need for PowerPoint or Outlook yet still requires absolute 100% Office compatibility for my work, Office Starter has met all of my needs. That right there is perhaps the biggest pro of Office Starter. Even though it might not have all the features of the full Office suite, it is still 100% across-the-board compatible. A Word document or Excel spreadsheet created in Office 2010 Professional will look pixel-to-pixel identical when opened in Office Starter, and vice-versa. Although LibreOffice and similar FOSS office suites are good programs in their own right, they simply are not absolutely 100% compatible with Office. As others have mentioned above, I too have recommended Office Starter to those who only need Word and Excel (Or even just Word), and haven't heard any complaints from them. I even found the actual installation files for it in the recovery partition on my new ThinkPad laptop, and have successfully used them to install Office Starter on my home-built Windows 7 desktop. So, when Microsoft does away with Office Starter, I'll still have a way to install it on any new computers I buy or build in the future. Yes, ads are annoying. But, at least Microsoft did something right with the ads in Office Starter, and made them unobtrusive. No rapid flashing, no popups, no ads with audio. They just sit there in the corner, slowly cycling, and are quite easy to tune out once you start focusing on your work. So, I can understand why some people dislike Office Starter...but I legitimately don't understand the mass hysteria about it being a bad program, and the "good riddance" attitude of most people in regards to the news of it being discontinued. I LIKE Office Starter. Yes, I could buy a full version of Office if I wanted to...but I don't NEED to. Office Starter meets all of my SOHO requirements. Thus, I'm part of the incredibly small minority of people who actually think it's dumb for them to get rid of Starter.
1. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Bert64 · 2012-06-22 18:28 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  There is no such thing as "100% office compatibility"... Just 2 days ago i watched someone copy his powerpoint presentation from one dell laptop to a slightly different model because he couldn't get the external monitor port working with a projector. The results, when displayed up on a big screen were quite embarrassing, with various formatting errors cropping up. Both laptops were a similar age, both running windows 7 and msoffice 2010.
  
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2. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by martin-boundary · 2012-06-22 19:46 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Thus, I'm part of the incredibly small minority of people who actually think it's dumb for them to get rid of Starter.
  
  I suspect they're being smarter than you give them credit, actually. Did you click on the ads and buy a product? No? How many people who used Starter did actually clickthrough? I bet the Starter Edition brings in next to no revenue to Microsoft. They may not be very good at software engineering, but they are excellent at sales, and if they think that switching people to a new shareware/trialware system is going to be more profitable, then they're probably right.
3. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 19:49 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  That usually means the presentation was made by someone who is incompetent.
  It is like people using the spacebar to "align" columns in a text document instead of using a table, and then
  wondering why it looks so ugly when they print it or change the font.
  There are lots of people who "know how to use office". But often they know very, very little.
4. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by rmstar · 2012-06-22 21:33 · Score: 1
  
  That usually means the presentation was made by someone who is incompetent.
  Oh, but wasn't it supposed to be all easy?
  
  It is like people using the spacebar to "align" columns in a text document instead of using a table, and then wondering why it looks so ugly when they print it or change the font.
  But powerpoint and word are supposed to be WYSIWYG, a promise, it seems, that they cannot keep reliably. Using spaces isn't the smartest thing, but it should work in a WYSIWYG environment as long as you do not change the font.
5. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by NoodleSlayer · 2012-06-22 22:14 · Score: 2
  
  Word in no way is WYSIWYG. It pretty explicitly is a layout engine, You change the margins, page settings of your document, target it to a different printer, it reflows your document. If your default printer on machine A has different page settings then your default printer on machine B then the document is flowed differently, this is *expected* behavior. PowerPoint is a little more WYSIWYG, but it's still reliant on machine-specific things like fonts. If you rely on non-standard fonts that aren't on the other machine of course it's not going to show up right. There's still other thing like relying on features that were added in newer versions of powerpoint where if you try to open it in a older version it'll do a best effort attempt to render everything correctly, but it's not guaranteed to get everything pixel perfect.
6. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Patch86 · 2012-06-22 22:22 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That usually means the presentation was made by someone who is incompetent.
  The vast majority of people who use presentation software (the entire target market for Powerpoint) are not going to be experts. It's software pretty much explicitly for people are not experts at graphic design (such as your average executive or middle manager) to put together a little visual accompaniment to a meeting they're running. If they needed to be an expert in Powerpoint in order for it to be useful, they probably wouldn't be using Powerpoint- they'd be using a proper graphic design package.
  If Microsoft Office is too complicated for the masses of non-IT office workers to use properly, something has gone horribly wrong.
7. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2012-06-23 00:08 · Score: 1
  
  It is not a bug. It is a feature. Badly implemented feature but feature nonetheless.
  MsOffice promises to be WYSIWYG. That is what you see on the screen is exactly what you will get when you print it. Yes, it actually belongs to that era where printing documents from MsOffice was its main use. All its foundations are laid to meet that spec. But Microsoft screwed up the implementation. Instead of making the screen master and the printer should exactly print the screen, they intermingled printer idiosyncrasies into page layout code. Thus when you change the printer, to be WYSIWYG, the screen layout has to necessarily change!. Two identical machines, different printers, same doc, lays out differently. That is what you saw there. The printer specific code so thoroughly intermingled, there is no easy way for them to fix it now.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
8. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Nimey · 2012-06-23 02:00 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I know this post is gonna get voted down
  KARMA WHORE SPOTTED.
  Also, please use paragraphs as a courtesy to your readers. I can't make myself read that constipated mess.
  
  --
  Hail Eris, full of mischief...
  
  E pluribus sanguinem
9. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Bert64 · 2012-06-23 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  I seriously doubt those two laptops were configured with different printers, both belong to employees of the same company who work in the same office and in which there is only one type of printer. I can't imagine any reason why those two machines would have different printer settings.
  As for implementing software to respect printer margins, i can kind of understand why word would have been written that way... But powerpoint? 99% of powerpoint users are intending to display their work on screen and will probably never print it.
  
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10. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by deimtee · 2012-06-23 03:32 · Score: 1
  
  It's not just the model of printer or the driver installed. An office document will reflow if any of the print settings on the printer setup are changed. Margins are the main culprit, but even something like changing from metric to imperial units will do it.
  Here in Aus, the A4 / US Letter resize screws up a lot of formatting.
  
  --
  I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
11. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2012-06-23 03:36 · Score: 1
  
  The basic code that handles fonts, rendering, kerning, word wrap, hypenation etc are common to Word and Powerpoint. All these were written long ago when the machines were underpowered, disk was slow and expensive, and most offices were printer centric and the PC was targeted to secretaries upgrading from IBM selectric typewriters. Daisy wheel typewriters and golf ball typeface typewriters doubled up as "computer printers" in the early days of Wordstar, Wordperfect and MS-Word.
  Remember? you need only 7 bit ASCII for printing most text, so Wordstar used the eighth bit to indicate a following blank-space/end-of-word marker. Saved a grand total of a one magnificent byte per word! Squeezed 35 more words in a 360K floppy disk and bragged about it in the annual performance review. I am sure Microsoft poached that genius from Wordstar and made him team lead or something. You can laugh at him. But he cant hear you, he is probably a millionaire "partner level" executive of Microsoft. There are areas of code no one goes in, no one understands why it was written that way or even why it works.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
12. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 06:17 · Score: 0
  
  The attitude you speak of has very little to do with whether Office Starter is worthless or not, it has to do with the artificial market segmentation Microsoft practices. They get their products and cripple them into several different versions, creating market segments out of thin air.
  You've just been brainwashed into thinking that it's OK to have to tolerate advertisements in an office suite. It's unbelievable the kinds of abuses people get used to...
13. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by Torin+Darkflight · 2012-06-23 11:50 · Score: 1
  
  Bad wording on my part. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate for me to say that Starter has "the highest level of Office compatibility". Provided it is created and formatted properly, a document created in paid Office should typically appear identical when opened in Starter, or vice-versa. But, I could see situations where there might be some incompatibility, especially if it was created using the handful of features in paid Office that genuinely are missing or crippled in Starter. I don't anticipate the average home user or moderate SOHO user would encounter them, though (I myself haven't yet...knock on wood).
14. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by zippthorne · 2012-06-23 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  But powerpoint isn't intended to be printed, primarily, although it does have a mode to print your "notes" those are not supposed to be something you distribute, but instead something you use to queue your speech, or if you forget something.
  My guess would be that powerpoint uses a mixture of screen relative positioning and pixel exact positioning, which screws things up if you change the display size. Perhaps the "nearly identical machine" is a red herring, and the real problem happened when he hooked up the projector. A typical laptop these days will have a 16:10 or 16:9 display, whereas most presentation projectors have a 4:3 display.
  
  --
  Can you be Even More Awesome?!
15. Re:Office Starter ISN'T "worthless garbage" by couchslug · 2012-06-23 14:14 · Score: 1
  
  You'll still buy their OS, so no loss to them if they dump Starter.
  If you need backup copies, torrent sites will provide.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Paragraphs? by Qubit · 2012-06-22 18:16 · Score: 2, Funny

Have you heard of them?

--

coding is life /* the rest is */
1. Re:Paragraphs? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-22 19:17 · Score: 1
  
  Paragraphs aren't supported in the ad-ware Internet Explorer Starter that grandparent poster is using.
2. Re:Paragraphs? by PenquinCoder · 2012-06-23 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  Your sig should be on a t-shirt.
3. Re:Paragraphs? by Torin+Darkflight · 2012-06-23 11:39 · Score: 1
  
  It WAS broken up into paragraphs when I typed it out, but it stripped them out once I clicked Submit. Maybe I need to completely disable NoScript on here.
Restricted license by dutchwhizzman · 2012-06-22 18:35 · Score: 4, Informative

You 're not allowed to do commercial things with that. Why would I need office for home use? No, I'm not a student, so what exactly do you propose to do with it?
Send a letter to my sister congratulating her with her birthday? Put all my recipes in a spreadsheet (after all, it's a database, right?). Maybe make a presentation so I can convince my girlfriend it's better to watch sports on television tonight than Jersey Shore?
Keep in mind that many companies already have a license where it's legal for their employees to run full office at home and that many charities get a "free" license from MicroSoft so their volunteers can use it. There isn't a lot of situations left where you would actually have to buy a license if you really wanted to use MS Office and not be able to do so already, or use the Starter Edition, or Libre Office. Only there the "Home" license would be required.
Oh, now I see, you want to use full blown Outlook because you like the features (I despise it with a vengeance myself). Sorry, that's not in Office Home, you need to buy the full package for that

--
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
1. Re:Restricted license by Nimey · 2012-06-23 01:56 · Score: 1
  
  Outlook is a godawful email client unless you've got it talking to an Exchange server. It is just bearable with a POP server but deliberately[1] bad for IMAP.
  [1] bad enough that simple incompetence can't adequately explain it.
  
  --
  Hail Eris, full of mischief...
  
  E pluribus sanguinem
2. Re:Restricted license by gerrytucker · 2012-06-23 01:59 · Score: 2
  
  I actually use this for making presentations for church and my kids use it for school presentations. I also like using spreadsheets for budgeting and items like that for the home. Just throwing out a few situations where a cheaper license like this is useful. Before it was available I would not consider getting Office because of the price and the rest of the family did not want to learn a different (free) office suite so they did not have anything to use.
Office Starter Edition by maroberts · 2012-06-22 19:54 · Score: 1

Made me download LibreOffice

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Re:I've been here since the eternity! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-23 01:08 · Score: 0

Fuck off and give it a rest dude. We're all just ignoring your virusware post, chances are Google is too.
Why not pre-install LibreOffice? by jomcty · 2012-06-23 02:01 · Score: 1

Why not pre-install LibreOffice and provide a link to download Microsoft Office just in case someone feels they still have to have it?
1. Re:Why not pre-install LibreOffice? by vandamme · 2012-07-04 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  Duh, nobody would. And how much money would they make?
Answering your LO questions by Qubit · 2012-06-23 07:57 · Score: 1

Out of the hundreds of examples, I give you one, which to me is enough to make the $100 price of Office worth it. Try this in LibreOffice:
Roger

* Create a multipage document eg 6 pages
1) Open LO Writer.
2) Hit CTRL+ENTER 5 times (to add 5 pages to the document)
3) Success!

* Try and select 3 pages worth of text using Shift-PgDn
1) Open LO Writer.
2) Copy the text from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum and paste it once or twice into your document.
Your document will now be about 3-6 pages long (assuming default fonts, etc..)
3) Use PgUp to go to the top of the document.
4) Press and hold SHIFT+PgDn until you have selected the entire document.
5) Success!
(I used LibreOffice 3.4.4 OOO340m1 (Build:402) on Ubuntu 11.10, but I expect these instructions will work on 3.5/3.6 on various Windows flavors as well)
If LibreOffice still isn't working properly for you, feel free to ask for help on the #libreoffice channel on Freenode or file a bug using the Bug Submission Assistant.

--

coding is life /* the rest is */
Answer a question Teun by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-24 04:40 · Score: 0

What does it TASTE LIKE, in you having to "eat your words" flavored w/ your foot in your mouth + spiced with the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2931443&cid=40430025
* Hmmm??
(Now, I am going to do to YOU, what you *TRIED* to do to me, and you failed in it, numerous times, not just there... no, I am putting the shoe on the other foot, yours, and you put that foot into your mouth, lol!)
APK
P.S.=> You've trolled me in the past, & RUN from disproving points I made on custom hosts files, which I proved in that exchange also (as well as the fact you can't back up your b.s. technically either in computing), so "turnabout is fair play" & I am loving humiliating you for it (perhaps it will teach you a lesson to RESPECT YOUR ELDERS & BETTERS & do the next person dealing with you trolling them a favor, getting you to consider that not everyone "blows off trolls & ignores them"... not me - I systematically DESTROY wise-ass worms like you, with your OWN FAULTS/MISTAKES, & especially since you seem to "get off" on trolling others... how's it FEEL when the shoe's on the other foot, and you've been made to look a fool for it?)...
... apk
Teun, answer a question by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-24 04:43 · Score: 0

What does it TASTE LIKE, in you having to "eat your words" flavored w/ your foot in your mouth + spiced with the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat" -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2931443&cid=40430025
* Hmmm?? I don't care what evasive BULLSHIT you state here either - face me directly over there, that is, IF YOU HAVE *ANY* BALLS!
You surely trolled me there, and in other places (I proved that much there), so, let's see how "brave" you are, & see you disprove my points on custom hosts files and what they do benefitting end users of them... ok, troll?
Of course, you'll evade that too, as per your TROLLING weak usual!
(Now, I am going to do to YOU, what you *TRIED* to do to me, and you failed in it, numerous times, not just there... no, I am putting the shoe on the other foot, yours, and you put that foot into your mouth, lol!)
APK
P.S.=> You've trolled me in the past, & RUN from disproving points I made on custom hosts files, which I proved in that exchange also (as well as the fact you can't back up your b.s. technically either in computing), so "turnabout is fair play" & I am loving humiliating you for it!
Perhaps it will teach you a lesson to RESPECT YOUR ELDERS & BETTERS & do the next person dealing with you trolling them a favor, getting you to consider that not everyone "blows off trolls & ignores them"...
(Not I - I, rather, systematically DESTROY wise-ass worms like you, with your OWN FAULTS/MISTAKES, & especially since you seem to "get off" on trolling others... how's it FEEL when the shoe's on the other foot, AND IN YOUR MOUTH, and you've been made to look a fool for it?)...
... apk
Google Apps MS office by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-24 05:04 · Score: 0

I use google apps for my personal and business use. I find it much more convenient and useful than MS office. It doesn't suck up enough ram to create a gravitational pull (as ms office does). My data is more excessible. I can do just about everything that I could do with MS office (and more). I am not tied into proprietary formats. Even the cheapest office at $100 is a ripoff in comparison. If you want to stay out of the cloud there is always open office or libreoffice. I don't see why people still like to use software that is a huge hit on their hardware resources and ties you in to a proprietary format.
Not until... by logicassasin · 2012-06-25 08:48 · Score: 1

... LibreOffice changes it's name to something less awful than "LibreOffice" will downloads increase.
Part of the problem with many free alternatives to closed/commercial software lies in the name: Libre Office sounds like a bad knock-off and doesn't roll off the tongue as well as Open Office or even Star Office for that matter. Give it a better name and people may want to give it a try.

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Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.