Microsoft Phasing Out Office Starter Edition

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."

Comments

Who cares?

[ozmanjusri]

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

Re:Who cares?

[donaldm]

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.