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Can Microsoft Really Convince People To Subscribe To Software?
curtwoodward writes "For most consumers, monthly subscriptions are still something for magazines and cable TV. With Office 365, Microsoft is about to embark on a huge social experiment to see if they'll also pay that way for basic software. But in doing so, Microsoft has jacked up prices on its old fee structure to make subscriptions seem like a better deal. And that could really leave a bad impression with financially struggling consumers."
The icon was the Borg Gates, now it is just a word.
Consumers expect free - due to open source movement. That means we are headed to ad supported model which is BAD. I'd rather pay for my tech. I'll sign up.
No.
If you liked Microsoft Tax you're going to love Microsoft Rent.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
Adobe has recently made their full software suite available for a monthly fee. Compared to paying several thousands for the software, you only pay $70 per month. For me that seems much better. If, on the other hand, I would like make longer commitment to Adobe's software, I could buy the whole suite, too!
At least for my needs, LibreOffice takes care of everything I have to do. Perhaps if more people were educated about alternatives it would knock some steam out of Microsoft. I understand that enterprise would be a hard sell, but on the consumer level it is doable.
Offer me a 12€/year subscription for continued support of Windows XP and I'll sign.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Most customers will pay 1200 for a 600 phone as long as they can pay it month to month in stead of all at once. Welcome to modern consumerism.
I won't even pay for antivirus, because it's all yearly subscription. Give me a one time charge, and we might talk.
...already does most things every non-business, home user needs.
E-mail, docs, social-thingy, photos etc.
For free.
I'm sure the small/mid-sized corporate sector will love Microsoft's subscription offering - but I guess I just don't see the value proposition for private users.
MS can only raise their price to a limit. If it is too much, then Linux will finally win the Desktop War (more Linux users than Windows users).
You can bend over and only have it shoved in a little bit, over and over, or you can take it all at once.
It doesn't get much more "all-encompassing" than that, plus an extra 5 degrees for good measure.
Going back to the time-sharing days is not something most of us would like. The PC revolution was all about empowering the user, the subscription/cloud model is all about giving control back to big companies.
I hope it won't happen, but after seeing the queues to buy a overrated, expensive toy this Friday and assuming there are that many ready to part with their money in exchange for a locked system, I really don't expect it to fail. There are many that will trade freedom for (assumed) convenience too easily.
If Microsoft offers a better deal for subscriptions than a perpetual license, people will take it. My guess is Microsoft will use subscriptions as a shell game to extract more money from consumers, which is not a better deal.
The last Microsoft Office product I bought was Word 97. I've been using OpenOffice, then LIbreOffice, since about 2002. It's a OK word processor, a mediocre but adequate spreadsheet, and a better draw program than Office. What's in Microsoft Office that a home user would need, let alone pay for monthly?
So, my Office suite was purchased back in the latter half of 2000 (maybe first half of 2001, don't exactly remember). It still works fine, and I haven't spent a dime on it since then.
Back in the bad old days, when we were forever reaching for that next release of the OS or that next release of Word in the hopes that it would crash less often and we could actually get some work done, Microsoft built a business model based on expensive incremental releases (a similar game to what Apple is playing now with hardware) and we all went along with it because we needed something that worked.
To a certain extent, Microsoft is now a prisoner of their own success. For the great majority of users, Office stopped progressing over a decade ago, and Windows stopped progressing in 2002 (xp sp1). There is no longer any need to go out and buy every new version. Hasn't been for awhile.
The problem is, Microsoft relies on that new release income to function, and I'm sure they're worried. Now comes a new paradigm -- software rental -- that guarantees it. I'm sure that seemed like a great idea, and I'm sure the person who came up with the idea of jacking up the prices of their non-subscription products got a big ol' raise.
The thing is, there are fewer and fewer reasons to stick with Microsoft products, and more and more ways to migrate off them while maintaining backwards compatibility. If you stick with the mindset that "we are microsoft, and people will buy from us for that reason only", the strategy makes sense. But I wonder if the premise is true anymore. Personally, if and when I can't use my old crufty copy of Office anymore, I will actively seek one of the free solutions before allowing myself to be locked into a Microsoft solution. It's just self-preservation.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You can use it until they 'upgrade' the format. At some point few enough people will be using the older formats that they become effectively unusable.
And considering how terms and conditions change on the fly, to lock myself into a subscription that can be turned off at anytime because I refused to go along with the new terms is just asinine.
As it is, my Office XP license is perfect for me, but already MS is playing games with that. I have a license that I bought in '02 and it worked fine for YEARS, then one day, MS sneaked in the Genuine something or another (that's what I get for being zealous about keeping my system up to date and continuously checking that my selection or unselection for the Genuine whatever STAYED uncbecked) and it still said it was OK. then one day for some reason, the Genuine fucker decided that NOW my license is illegitimate? WTF, MS?! - I get the pop-up and whatnot but I ignore it - fuck'em.
My point? I don't trust them - or ANY software vendor with a subscription. I think some of those people are working there because they were fired for ethics issues with the cable companies.
If such a scheme is introduced, it will cause/fuel a renewed proliferation of Crack and Hacks that will really cost M$ serious money in the long run.
Since older versions still abound, and I am quite confident that there are more than a few of us that will simply hold on to those versions until it is simply impossible to do so any more. By then, there will be a Free alternative, and M$ may have learned its lesson.
People subscribe to stuff (software) all the time. How many folks pay for WoW? How many businesses pay "annual maintenance" which akin to a subscription.
As for folks liking FOSS, it's still there. If FOSS was that good*, MS would not sell as much as they do.
*I'm an old *nix guy. I ~do~ dig FOSS, when it's appropriate. Currently, MS Office is the defacto standard in the business world.
I know it's cool to gripe about MS and Bill Gates. I prefer to waste my time on other things. And, I've ~never~ been accused of being cool.
God is good all the time! -K
Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free.
Consumers expect free. Not because of open source, because of the internet. Facebook is free, news is free, Google docs are free, everything is free.
Of course, businesses are willing to pay if it gives them a competitive advantage or improves the bottom line, and Microsoft makes most of their money from b2b sales. So the question is whether Microsoft can get them on a subscription basis.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
If they are already getting monthly/yearly fees from customers, what's the incentive to produce good products? Now we get to vote by not buying that version and continuing to use an old one. With this new model they'll get money either way.
Their hard core users will probably pay, but many people are occasional users. Free and/or cheaper products will make out big on this. Word processing and spreadsheets aren't exactly cutting edge applications anymore.
I thought the point of having a monopoly was that you didn't have to convince your customers about anything.
I work for the DoD. I think there is about 0% chance of the DoD every switching away from Microsoft for the desktop. Where I work, it's all MS for sql-servers, exchange servers, internet servers, and we will probably go with sharepoint.
Other companies were I have worked are the same. Very few businesses take anything non-Microsoft seriously.
I wonder if they are making a grave long-term error
In real estate, one of the pros of renting (vs buying) is that it is much easier to switch.
If this applies to software, wouldn't switching to a rent model make it easier for users to switch to a competitor?
Indeed. We are running up against this with Excel 2003. While with the compatibility pack it can open Excel 2007 and 2010 files, the newer features do not work rendering 2003 little better than a glorified viewer for some of the spreadsheets being sent to some of our staff.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But it's hard to believe that people, and especially businesses, will actually fall for this scam.
Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
If you need to install 5000 computers you could be looking at 5 million dollars in cash outlays just for software licences. And as other people point out, when you need to upgrade you need to upgrade a lot of your IT, that can be 5 million dollars all at once. With a subscription cost it makes your expenses less bursty.
The other thing with businesses is that a subscription plan defers some of your IT responsibility away from in house, that's actually good for small shops. Trying to navigate the various upgrade paths, support options, and trying to stay compliant with volume licencing arrangements costs money.
It also means, when you layoff staff, that you aren't stuck holding investments in software that you don't need anymore.
You're right, most consumers don't care, but that's where you want to find a value added service to tack on that you're charging for. Cloud storage and synchronization sort of stuff usually.
Probably less than 5% of consumers use open source.
As a long term MS user. I find this as a mistake. I don't like cloud computing BTW and i'll keep my stuff here at home not on someones server. Why should i pay someone to keep my files when i can do just as carefully here?
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
I don't think most consumers will go for it out of the box, but I bet windows 8 pc's will come with some free limited time subscription. Then people will be tempted to continue paying some monthly fee. Same thing with pay per month or micro transaction video games.
Corporations will probably like it because many seem to prefer leasing or otherwise renting over buying.
Because, in today's day and age, more and more people are at work 24/7. So, they need to read documents and other shit from work - they also need to work from home.
Now, to head off the "just use Open/Libre Office at home", I'd like to point out that:
1. Your employer may demand that you use Microsoft
2. even if they don't, IF you have a problem of ANY sort, your employer's support staff may blow you off because you're not using an approved application.
3. If your elmployer uses VB macros, the Open/Libre Office may not run them correctly.
I will not argue what is right - just what is.
Back in 1998 one of my colleagues expressed a favorable attitude towards the pay per view technology being marketed by Circuit City as Divx. I gasped and suggested an analogy of having to pay Microsoft a dime every time you used MS word or even worse, every time you saved a document. While not the same as subscriptions the concept is similar.
Office is deeply entrenched in the business world so this move could be a financial bonanza for Microsoft until the business world rebelled. Lotus Notes (Which IMNSHO sucks big green donkey dicks.) could replace Outlook and the Lotus suite of apps based on Open Office could replace the balance of Office. Courageous management would dump commercial software and go with Open Office or Libre Office.
Big challenges are user training and finding a replacement with the same kind of email and calendar integration that Outlook offers. I work for a large tech company. Being able to schedule meetings and conference calls, and getting reminders of same makes the work day flow smoothly. At least until your exchange server becomes unreachable.
We need a Darth Balmer icon for Slashdot.
Adobe started the "rent" thing a couple years ago. I guess it works IF you need to upgrade all the time. But if you feel you can skip an upgrade you're SOL.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Adobe, or open-source stuff....
I wish I could rate your post "+1 quaint"
I have a personal technet subscription, which is effectively renting MS products (annual fee, access to latest software, and other goodies)
Work has enterprise licencing, which is not much different.
so... some of us have been renting MS software for years.
Comes free with your Internet access. And makes PDFs out of the box if you are concerned how it looks on the other side.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Why should i pay someone to keep my files when i can do just as carefully here?
FTFY:
Why (other than sloth) would i pay some anonymous entity (who couldn't give a damn about anything but short-term financial gain) to keep my files when i can do it infinitely better and infinitely more securely here by myself?
Piss on Microsoft. I will just pirate it and they can kiss my ass for being greedy.
to fdisk ms_windows off my PC and install Linux
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Very few businesses take anything non-Microsoft seriously.
That is the issue, isn't it? In my environment, all the users have been migrated to linux distros and libre office. Then again, my environment is just that, mine. Any issues of compatibility are minor and usually not worth the hassle of worrying about. IE is a great example, requiring that I do special coding for it, so I've stopped using it. I tell my users that they are using a browser that isn't compliant to the standards and that they should either change to one that is or live with the issue.
This just doesn't work for large companies or institutions that have become dependent upon Microsoft products, users in Windows with stock IE installations want to buy thier products or browse the company's website which basically perpetuates the issue.
I have resolved the problem by removing IE as a supported browser, however, it just isn't feasible for IBM, Dell or even Newegg to do the same. To me, requiring HTML5 compliance has lowered my costs and improved my users' experience (once they experienced the better environment).
...unless I keep getting the $10 versions from work home use program (HUP). The problem with HUP is I can select (currently) either Office 2010 or Office 2011, but not both (just in case it's not obvious, the former is Windows, and the latter is Mac OS). And yes, I want and need both.
My company uses Windows workstations, but I prefer Mac OS at home. Most of the time, Office:Mac is just fine. Except, you know, the glaring omissions of Access and OneNote, which cause me to have to boot up Parallels (less of a chore since adding the Thunderbolt SSD).
As it is, I know I'm breaking the MS license -- I've got Office 2011 installed on a laptop and my desktop. I'd prefer to have it universally installed on all machines so I can maintain a single, master image, but I'm not too egregious with the license abuse.
If I can have multiple installs of both Windows and Mac versions for the low price of $100 per year, yeah, I'm all for it. The only thing cheaper for my circumstances would be going back to the old days of piracy.
--Jim (me)
If you do signup for an MS Office subscription, make sure you uninstall the software before the subscription expires. Some of the most badly-borked systems I have encountered in the past three years have had a pre-release version of Office installed that went beyond its timebomb date. I expect similar badness to occur with systems where an Office subscription has expired.
Considering what a pile of substandard trash things like Office are, that they still have not caught up with open standards and are lagging behind badly on the OS front, I would think that people are morons and MS marketing realizes that and knows how to play them well.
Therefore I predict this will be a huge commercial success.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The latest (as of last week, apparently) owners are shilling for adbucks wherever they can get them.
This is now an anti-Apple site, not an anti-MS site like it used to be.
You'll need the Wayback Machine to find the anti-MS slashdot.
With my broadband internet connection. I pay the same price for 150/10Mbps pipe that I used to pay for 60/6Mbps one, so I could say that those licences are really free. I guess that's one way they can convince people to use them. I have no choice to give those licenses back and get a discount. I don't think Microsoft has nothing out of it.
One word: gnumeric
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Despite having technet, I still use LibreOffice more than Office ... I have both installed but i kinda like the interface of LibreOffice more.
If I have friends / family that ask about this .... well technically whenever i have had friends /family complain about buying office i have just told them to try OpenOffice before then LibreOffice now. Most of them tried open/Libre office and decided it was pretty good ...and really good for free and just used that.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
When I get a Word file from someone for review, I feed it to an online MS Word PDF Printer, then scribble all over the PDF file with Xournal and send the resultant PDF back to the originator.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Microsoft owns the OS. They can handle hacked versions of Office rather easily.
If you can write off the subscription cost in your business, then you can have some justification.
But for a home users? The vast majority would likely be happy with the office version they bought with their computer, and using on their next computer if they could. They need to upgrade just about never.
Getting roped into annual fees makes absolutely no sense in this case.
Keep in mind that to consumers, their operating system is 'free' as well, since they likely bought it from Dell or a big box store, and the cost was tacked onto the price of the machine and then discounted. We used to call this the 'hidden Microsoft tax'. Point is, if nobody comes up to you and says 'You owe $199.95 for the operating system for your computer' when you buy it, they'll think it's 'free'. And back in the day, they even bundled the demo version of Microsoft Works with new computers, as far upstream as XP (I THINK I remember dealing with a brand new XP machine with Works preinstalled from Dell)...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Not really a social experiment, is it? More a sort of, well, business one.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They have been on this sort of model for a long time with large customers.
Nothing really new.
But i do find it humorous as in the old days they were fighting against IBM's similar model with the big iron, and now we are coming full circle.
Guess it wasn't so bad after all :)
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Like they can handle the hacked (registration free) versions of Win7 that you can download everywhere?
Actually the subscription thing is primarily driven by businesses, not consumers.
You're mostly right ... so far. But if you read the current stories about Microsoft's Office 365 pitch, they are very clearly pitching consumers. There have only been two subscription plans announced for Office 2013 so far: Home & Student and Home & Business. The Business one is designed for companies with 10 employees or less. The Home & Student one includes a license to install the software on five computers, and all can be used by different people as long as they belong to the same household.
Microsoft is expected to announce enterprise subscription plans for Office 2013, but they have said nothing about it so far. It's all pretty much been home users and very small businesses.
Breakfast served all day!
This is why businesses should push very hard to use nothing but open formats. Tying yourself to a single vendor for hardware or software is just asking for trouble. A company can abuse their customers much more if it's difficult to switch products.
Or the zero days will boink you. Especially if you are a large enterprise. However, if they were to provide access to a source code repo I could almost choke it down. Long odds there I'd bet.
They should have released office applications for iOS at 2x the price of their iWork equivalents. Then they should have moved all that into the metro style, and released basically the same metro designs for Windows 8.
That might have cost them more than it produced in revenue, but now the result is that millions of people have been delightedly using their iPads for a couple years, and they're doing ok without MS Office. Even enterprise users. And MS still doesn't have an announced plan to bring Office to Metro (Windows 8 Style, whatever).
Including Office in Windows 8 RT might attract a lot of people to the platform. But it might also be the only way they can get Office deployed on a lot of tablets. Like, great, but also technically shovelware. I'd love to say that Microsoft has their work cut out for them, but that implies that they are working on the right things now. Dunno. I hope it works.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
So I can imagine that this might work as it has worked for me. .Mac or whatever it was called meant that files and data could be transfered to a new machine. $80 bought me an office suite that could be used on whatever machine I owned. Now with the App store I can load software onto a new machine without media, though data is no longer part of the deal. Of course Apple is no longer charging a yearly fee for basic services.
My feeling is that if MS wants to bring a new generation of users, they should do the same. Give away a basic version of Office for home users. Give away a basic level of online connectivity. The real reason this won't work is that Google does this, and for what most students and home users need, it is more than enough. Most people would be foolish to pay $100 a year for what google gives away for free. It is not like the data students and home user have is critical, and will cost them $100 on the slight chance they lose it.
For the non corporate user, MS is falling far behind the curve as they try to gain revenue. At first MS software was essentially free to the individual or student. Then they tried to charge. Then they made it closer to free. Now they are trying to charge again. This does not work. Young people are going to go into offices know google, not MS, so what are employees going to use if possible?
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I would love nothing more, but my company is primarily a government contractor, and until the departments we deal with start using open formats, we are stuck. As it is, we are pretty much looking at buying licenses for the remaining Office 2003 installs by the end of this year. So far our Office 2007 workstations still seem capable of dealing with anything Office 2010 throws at us.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free. The rest of us are perfectly willing to pay for things. But it's hard to believe that people, and especially businesses, will actually fall for this scam.
For example, I still have Office 2003. I bought it, I paid for it, and unless someone from Microsoft shows up at my house and points a gun at my head, I can continue to use it forever.
Dream on. Somewhere around 2000-2003 Microsoft software products started getting real cozy with the Mothership via Internet. Meaning that there's a fairly decent chance that Microsoft could simply switch it off on you. Although more likely, based on their past history, you'll simply discover one day that the latest version of Windows won't run Office 2003 properly any more. And whether or not they decide to do an "Amazon" and "1984" old copies of Office or not, it's a virtual certainty that they'll do that for your old versions of Windows itself, if for no other reason than to seal off old exploit vectors. The world has enough ancient infected Microsoft systems afflicting it as it is.
In the mean time, us dirty open-source hippies will be running office software that not only isn't constantly chatting back to home base, but we'll be able to keep it up to date, since new open-source releases will continue to be free.
Consumers expect free - due to open source movement. That means we are headed to ad supported model which is BAD. I'd rather pay for my tech. I'll sign up.
Can't we just call it "CompuServe .Net"? You'd think that people had never heard of this business model before.
I hear a lot of fear about returning to the time sharing model but I dont see it that way, this is just another option for people to get the tools!
Some people may not need an office suite that often so maybe renting it works for them, if you need Office Pro for a 3 month free lance contact, wouldn't you rather rent it for like 10-20$/Mo than buy it for like $400?
If OpenOffice, Liberoffice or some other tool works well for you, thats great, but 90% or more of the world use MS Office, and a lot of people just want things to work without thinking about what format they are saving to or whatever, not to mention other Office only features like revision tracking and such that AFAIK can't Round Trip thru the Open Source office clones.
If I ran the country (and I really think I should), government would be required to use an open format if one exists. Even if MS pulled slimy crap like they did with ISO, at least there would be a format there to use.
I don't see why not. Microsoft already gets lots of businesses on Software Assurance, which is just an insurance scam. And this would do away with an SA for Office licenses. I haven't done the math, but I bet it'll end up being a wash.
Adobe now does outright $50 subscriptions for Creative Suite. It's expensive, but not for a company that was used to buying multiple Adobe products per year, it can actually work out pretty nicely.
Paying a subscription for software is naturally abhorrent to me, but business cases do exist for it.
Facebook is free, news is free, Google docs are free, everything is free.
Of course, one large contributor to that is that all those vendors use open source software to reduce expenses. It's easier to offer service without nominal price when your costs are managed. If each of Facebook's or Google's servers were forced to pay licensing fees per server, their pricing or service quality might be vastly different,
But customers compare Microsoft's apples to Google's apples and apples from other vendors. The subscription based Ms-Office will live and die by its comparison to other subscription based document suites. Mainly google. Microsoft might bring in more backward compatibility with old office documents. ( on paper. In reality I find OpenOffice is better in opening pre 2000 documents than Microsoft itself.) Google has made really big strides in cooperative editing of shared documents from multiple locations.
All Microsoft has done is to have made its old off-line perpetual licensed versions very expensive. It wont persuade any business customers to fork over much money. Individuals? They will never ever pay for document software again. May be some over indulgent parent buying some lap-top for his/her college freshman child might swallow the "buy the best" line of the salesman and throw it in. BTW whats with these indulgent parents buying computers for their kids. I see college kids toting around 8 process 24 GB machines capable of running Ansys HFSS solving asymptotic wave form solutions for radar cross sections of fighter aircraft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The problem is two-fold. Businesses still view MS as the good guy to set the standards.
Who else should? Second, we tried standards and they never are quite teh same. Examples are the different web browsers and c/c++ compilers. Linux wont even compile in anything but GCC even though they all supposedly following the same ansi standards.
For these two reasons they fear change and actually think they save money from buying software from one company and locking down to one version of everything for 10 years and expect the world to stop to support their own needs.
I guess there is a 3rd problem too and it is middle aged folks who fear change and will fight tooth and nail to preserve the old. XP loyalists, office 2k3 loyalists, etc. Every and I mean every place that tried LibraOffice mentioned on slashdot always ends up with users in pitchforks demanding office and IT people get fired sometimes over it sadly. Never underestimate those who feel threatened by any change. They will gladly pay for Office or don't give a shit since the employer is taking the hit. Even if Office used 100% ODF with no quirks they wont change as Office is familiar.
http://saveie6.com/
I have a small business (t-shirt screen printing) and I'm forced to use some specialized software which normally cost a lot more than average software. I can live with that (don't like it...but that's life). In the last year many of the companies writing the software (industry specific invoicing, color separation, postscript halftone output) have copied the game world and went to subscription. I see no advantage to paying a minimum of $99 a month (subscription cost increases with usage amount) for a program that last year I could buy AND own for $599. For the last year I've been stockpiling software that runs flawlessly on XP SP3 since I have almost no alternatives in the *nix world. As long as I have a box that can run XP I'll be able to produce killer artwork, seps and invoices for the shop and keep my overhead to a reasonable amount. Worse case is I have to run a *nix laptop to talk to the outside world but the workhorse of the biz will be the archaic i386 in the corner burning up watts.
What is the average yearly rate of an MMO? Its definitely smore than $100/yr. Add some fun, enjoyable, "innovative" methods to collaborate, not just Skype. Also, make a promise - and keep that promise - not to spy on everyone just because you can.
You know a decade ago it seemed IE 6 was going to be the future forever as people hated change and websites optimized just for that one browser. Things did change though and finally forced MS to make an IE that doesn't suck and starts behaving like everyone.
Perhaps that can change with Office but right now Open/LibreOffice is not as good and there is no reason to change. Firefox was much quicker in version 1.5 Firebird than IE 6 and had new things like tabs. It still took nearly 4 to 5 years before people who are not geeks gradually switched in force to today where most people left IE.
The same is true with Office. We need something faster and has more functionality than Office before enough people will change. Corporate users are always last to change as some still use IE 6 today and plan to use it for decades more in Citrix virtual machines. Corps will change 5 to7 years after everyone else. Only then will standards win with a file format. The government can do all it wants but no one will take the risk of looking incompetent or losing customers with a messed up doc being emailed.
So geeks, think of things to add or write your own suite that is leaps and bounds better and offiers things no one else has and can run very fast. Then the problem will solve itself in time.
http://saveie6.com/
Businesses have been on a subscription model for many years. Client access licenses and otehr things have time limits built in or you can pay annually and you get free upgrades too. Like what what they do for WIndows 7 Enteprise licenses that they use to downgrade back down to XP.
It is practically free (as in paid for already) but they keep old around. Smaller businesses have leases and use clouds as well. To them they need monthly costs in line for lines of credit and to make good reports for partners and shareholders.
I admit consumers do not have such demands and probably wont put up with it. I will hold on to Office 2k10 for a long time if MS tries to pull this. Since I am transforming into one of those neophytes who hate change I will be keeping Windows 7 until 2019 as well so I know office will run on that for many many years.
Unfortunately, most people in the real world use an office product to share files and communicate with other people and entities. THerefore, what corps want we buy too do work at home and send resumes, etc. I have a feeling Office 2k13 will bomb as most corpos are going with office 2k10 from 2k3 as they migrate to Windows 7 this year and the next.
http://saveie6.com/
Sure, but microsoft sees the writing on the wall here. Home computing is becoming small business computing. And microsoft wants to be your IT guy because that's a value added service they can charge for.
Cloud services are very useful for students, portability and you don't lose your data when someone steals your laptop (or you spill coffee on it etc.). They're useful for old people who can't figure out backups, and want to keep their (sometimes very) important documents safe from computer failures and theft or loss. With my parents I'm at the point where being able to see and edit their documents from 400km away might be useful as they're getting older, in case they start doing goofy things. All of the stuff google docs does now, but hopefully with better privacy controls, and better document editing tools and compatibility.
Without a doubt MS is trying to find a way to make the subscription plan work in the home environment even though they've pulled the idea from their enterprise products. Google gives a comparable service away for 'free', making users into the product, as strange as it may seem to come out in favour of MS over google, I'd rather pay for software than have someone scanning my data for marketable keywords. Granted, Microsoft will probably try and do both, but we can always hope not.
You meant Colonel Klink... I think.
Long live the Resistance!
The trick to make it work is to offer the subscription at a really low price, for example, $5 per month.
And they can use upselling by providing online backups, for example at $10 per month.
This way, customers will think it's a great deal, because it adds real value.
However, I'm sure it won't work, for several reasons:
1) Microsoft will maintain their basic offer at $12.5 per month, which is too high. Come on, an Internet connection is cheap, and it's even more useful than Office !
2) most of the users don't really need Office. They just need notepad, and wordpad/spreadsheets for the most advanced users. And in general, advanced users use it for their work, so they'll be able to afford the one time charge.
3) proposing better online functions is a terrible idea. People will think that the acquired version is an uncomplete version, and it will hurt their brand. They should try instead to propose the newest options to the online version, and push upgrades later (6 months) for the offline version. This way, they'll attract people who crave for the latest versions.
4) for basic editing, plenty of free online (Google Documents) and offline solutions exist.
5) for important files (and people who invest $150 for some software believe that the software is worthy to handle their precious files), people need security, and software renting goes against security.
6) a bad upgrade will ruin the trust, and Microsoft is not very well known for its software stability
This is why we sent PDF files. Not word documents. We use free software exclusively where I work and we interact with a boatload of large corporations, governments, and consumers.
None of those are free, unless you put no value on your privacy
Consumers expect free - due to open source movement
What? Consumers generally think that anything that does not cost enormous amounts of money is not useful.
That means we are headed to ad supported model which is BAD.
We are not heading for an ad supported model; we already did that once, and it was a disaster. Remember the days when programs like BearShare would install malicious adware on your computer?
We are actually heading for something much worse than ad supported software: software as a service. You know, that thing where you have no control over your data, no control over your software, where you can be arbitrarily denied access to important documents for any reason or no reason, and where fees can be forced on you without warning. Ads will certainly appear in such software -- and probably will appear in addition to subscription fees (which is what you see on cable television).
Palm trees and 8
Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free.
Consumers expect free. Not because of open source, because of the internet. Facebook is free, news is free, Google docs are free, everything is free.
How naive.
I guess there's a sucker born every minute.
This is some sort of alternative timeline thing, right ?
Nah, it's all just relevence.
I don't see the pursuit of adbucks and relevance as mutually exclusive here.
In fact, they are probably tightly correlated. The question was "Why has the slashdot MS symbol changed?". There would likely be several reasons, (which all ultimately boil down to increasing slashdot revenue).
If he does not use the software made by that shining example of an American corporation named Microsoft - he must be a commie.
..a terrorist. Put him on the grope-at-airport-deport-to-Gitmo list.
If I ran the country (and I really think I should), government would be required to use an open format if one exists.
That only works if the OSS in question doesn't suck. Good luck with that.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The M$ shills are out in full force today spreading FUD, but let me assure you that OpenOffice can nowadays open, edit and safe both M$ XML files (such as *.docx) and the truly open formats.
With the XML formats, you can actually look at the source, which is (on an abstract, conceptual level) very much like HTML. Just load a docx file with a zipper and extract all the files you see. You can then edit the XML, zip it again and look at these changes in your office program. This is MUCH faster than using the crappy M$ scripting/COM-based technologies.
I strongly advise against using VBA, because it is technologically broken; it does not have proper development tools and you can't properly store source code in a revision control system. As said, it is fecking slow and buggy. If you have to automate things, let somebody write Java, C# or Perl programs to load an Excel/Calc file, compute something and write the file directly as XML. The last step is lightning fast. That solution will actually be maintainable from a software-engineering point of view.
Security of M$ products has historically been extremely bad. They don't make money by fixing bugs and they are addicted to making more money. Open source software is quite the opposite and you won't be exposed for days and weeks.
The only disadvantage of open source is in my opinion that the software and the resulting files don't look as sexy as M$ software and files. So if you customers can be "convinced" by glossy, blinky slides instead of substantial information/intelligence, you will need M$ Office.
If you want to appeal to rationality and want to have a sane IT landscape, stay away from M$ products, especially their VBA crapola. Open Source looks ugly like a Lada, but it is also maintainable and reliable like a Lada.
gnumeric was at one point an adequate replacement (much like gimp at one point was a good photoshop alternative) but it just hasn't kept up. It's fine for simple stuff (again, much like gimp) but it's no longer a serious alternative unless your usage is very basic.
Windows is bundled with free Crash Assurance and Obsolescence Assurance. You don't get that from free products.
It possesses the same exact problems as the Cloud infrastructure model along with the worse problems of the vendor-lock-in model.
If you go bankrupt you have the dilemma of either paying for access to your data and having creditors sue you for preferential payment, or not paying and your company losing it's infrastructure. With your corporate infrastructure outsourced, you have no control over where the administration is done from; if it is done from foreign soil, there are no repercussions for corporate espionage or sabotage from local competitors or foreign governments. With your infrastructure online, you now have increased WAN Bandwidth Costs which, depending on the site, may be prohibitive to the adoption of this technology. Having that Infrastructure available over a WAN Link introduces latency to the UI and in order to get the UI responsive you need to customize a remote application around it and that means you need to load client software of some kind to ensure the performance is there, and if your vendor is moving towards a walled garden, you can get locked into a vendor that will strangle your business dead. Finally, because your infrastructure is now over a WAN link, you have far more that can go wrong to cause downtime; the WAN link, remote tech support, remote hardware and remote systems can all fail and fail in unpredictable ways (e.g some features of Office 365 are only available to the 500+ subscriber club, and you will not know that going in).
The IT Industry has seen one very consistent rule over the years; proprietary systems always fail. The easier it is to modify it to do what you want, the better off you are.
Here is the future in a half dozen sentences.
-The new OS is the Virtual Machine Hypervisor.
-Drivers will be written for the Hyper-visors, and will be minimal.
-What we know of as OS's now will become Virtual Machines, and will be slimmed down to become Development Environments.
-Development Environments will contain a Base set of Binaries (Kernel and other OS Basics) and a set of functions that optimizes that platform for whatever it needs to run.
-Some will be built for rapid development (Middleware, simple apps), some will be built for major data-basing functions.
-When a VM Runs, it runs in it's own sand-boxed prison with a network link out to the network configured through the HyperVisor.
-There will exist Hardened Network Appliances and VM's that will handle security for the VM's.
-You will be managing thousands of these VM's if your a sysadmin.
-This is 10 years from now.
Linux will be the major competitor here because it won't cost ANYTHING to run a Linux VM that runs an HTTP Server with SQL Backend, as one example.
That's the reason everyone's building Walled Gardens. You can't stop the future.
If businesses were not in a Sadomasochistic Love Affair With VBA, they could easily switch over to LIbreoffice, too. Why do I use such drastic words ?
In my work setting we have to copy an Excel diagram into Powerpoint programmatically. Apparently the only way to achieve this is to copy the diagram into the clipboard (using VBA) and then calling a VBA routine in Powerpoint to grab the diagram from the clipboard and past it into the ppt file. This will go wrong 10% of time, for reasons only M$ knows. So we have to do this crap in a loop until it actually succeeds.
Certainly we cannot touch the computer while this is done, as this could "destroy" the clipboard contents.
Then, no Hashtables in VBA. Welcome to the land of O(n^3) runtimes. Or O(n^5) if you have bad luck.
In that setting, we have a C++ program remote-controlling Excel and PPT processes using COM. It is fucking slow as compated to directly writing XML files. But that is exactly how M$ wants people to use their products and the mega-corpo I work for is being ass-raped by M$ every day. In return they write fat checks.
The analogy there would be owning the hardware. And yes if they owned the hardware that would be a non issue.
Indeed. We are running up against this with Excel 2003. While with the compatibility pack it can open Excel 2007 and 2010 files, the newer features do not work rendering 2003 little better than a glorified viewer for some of the spreadsheets being sent to some of our staff.
They can save the files they receive as Excel 2003 and then they're as fully functional as 2003 could make them.
I would love nothing more, but my company is primarily a government contractor, and until the departments we deal with start using open formats, we are stuck. As it is, we are pretty much looking at buying licenses for the remaining Office 2003 installs by the end of this year. So far our Office 2007 workstations still seem capable of dealing with anything Office 2010 throws at us.
So you need one person who converts files for customer consumption. Everybody else could use open source.
Also, with adobe it's a low ($50) upfront cost, and only marginally more than buying outright (the up the cost of their upgrades by version).
It's probably a wash on the master collection it includes, upgrading from cs3 was a no brainer where I work (18 months before an outright purchase saved, and assuming cs6.5 or 7 came out then, it'd be a full 2 years if staying current).
A major cashflow win for a small business.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Libreoffice's default XML file format will be nicely opened by M$ office. So the company in your scenario can enter all the needed data in a Libreoffice spreadsheet, save it in Open Office XML and send it to the accounting office.
And yes, they don't need VBA, as VBA-based data processing is about as desirable as enhancing your immune system by acquiring Herpes. It won't kill you, but it will make endless trouble. Dataprocessing logic should be done in proper languages such as Java, Cobol, VB.Net, C#, Perl, C++ and the like. Languages with proper data structures, with proper source code control, with proper debuggers.
Get 5 copies, free upgrades, Cloud storage and use anywhere software. The streaming download is quite good as well. It may not make sense for home users, but anyone who primarily works with Excel, Word and Powerpoint it is a steal. That covers most of the managers and pursuit folks in the industry.
No they are not. With the more advanced functions available in docx, a save as on a complex 2007 or 2010 spreadsheet back to 97/xp/2002 format will simply lead to a sheet where formulas have been essentially saved as static values. Again, the file is viewable but is not without conversion of formulas themselves a useable spreadsheet. We've been down that path, and presumably with the fully OOXML compliant format with the next version of Office it will become worse and likely these incompatibilities will creep in 2007 and 2010, so that by two versions of Office these versions will become glorified viewers for new formats and I will wager 2003 won't receive a compatibility pack and won't be able to even act as a viewer.
Microsoft has no interest in keeping old software useful and every reason to increase incompatibilities as time goes by.
And yes, I know you can write custom functions to mimic newer behaviour, but on large sheets like we receive, recalculation can take an astonishingly long time for vbscript extensions.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you want to be cool these days, you need to be able to view Flash movies embedded into Excel documents !
That enables your friendly Chicom intel officer to send your employees an email with an Excel attachment. When they look at it, it will automatically open Flash player plus a nice little reconnaissance virus. That will abduct your latest product development blueprints directly to Chengdu, China. Chengdu Aircraft Works will build your F-35 sooner than you, actually !
No, this is NOT FICTION. All real. Read up the story of RSA "security" and Lockheed Martin. And Chengdu Aircraft and their J20/J21 fighters.
How do you want to be fucked today ?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/27/technology/rsa_hack_widespread/index.htm
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386086,00.asp
http://www.google.de/search?q=j20&hl=de&client=ubuntu&hs=qXD&channel=fs&prmd=imvnsl&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=1yheUPDVJaHl4QTExYDQDg&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1065&bih=701
Uh, what?
MS is following Oracle to the Trash-heap of history. Most Government agencies are running away from Oracle based products as quickly as possible. And many have yet to move up to Windows 7 due to cost and extra maintenance - more and more open-source is being adopted as the way of the future.
"No."
I'll either keep using the old version of Office I already have, or turn to free open-source alternatives. Micro$oft can go pound sand.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is like leasing or buying a car.
If you need to install 5000 computers you could be looking at 5 million dollars in cash outlays just for software licences. And as other people point out, when you need to upgrade you need to upgrade a lot of your IT, that can be 5 million dollars all at once. With a subscription cost it makes your expenses less bursty.
Weird. The software I own which went to a subscription model used to charge a couple of hundred dollars a year for an upgrade and now charges a couple of hundred dollars a year for a subscription.
The only difference is that whereas you could previously skip an upgrade, you can't skip the subscription unless you want to buy the software all over again in a few years.
He actually intended to say that OpenOffice does not look as polished and blinky as M$ Office. The same goes with the resulting documents. So for people who value substance over style and robustness over "integration" (VBA), Libreoffice is actually a vastly superior alternative.
If something is broken with Libreoffice, you can hire one of 100000 expert C++, freelance programmers to look into the source code. He can fix it for you. You are not at the mercy of a giant corporation with the worst ethical track record you can think of. Security issues are typically fixed the day after discovery, unlike M$ products defects. The latter typically take weeks to be fixed and all sorts of crap arguments are brought up why they can't be more nimble. The real reason is that they want all their developer resources be focused on version N+1. Because N+1 rakes in new money. N is already sold. All engineering efforts for N will only reduce profit. To the Allmighty God Of the Dollar We Preach. There Shall Be No Other God Than The Dollar. That is why you should avoid M$ products.
ms office is no longer the only game in town and if Valve really does bring gaming to Linux I may dump windows all together.
..on the outside you have Mint Linux. BTW, did you try Gimp and Inkscape ?
Folks, It's... just... a... word... processor. That's it. That's all it is. There is **nothing** unique or indispensable about the product. If you're paying for a license for that product instead of using Libreoffice then you're.... wasting.... money.... better.... spent... elsewhere.
as soon as games start supporting linux, I'm done with Windows lol.
the human capacity to be stupid.
So why not keep the parts that do work and just buy the ones that need Excel 2010 a copy of Excel 2010 and call it a day?
The problem with Excel is that the Excel jockeys really push the limits when it comes to using the features so sticking with the old version doesn't really work. Word? meh I've had no problem editing and saving Word 2K10 files in Word 2k, most folks don't use any more features now than they did then. Sure they like the preview bit in 2K7 and 2K10, but that doesn't affect the final document.
With Excel on the other hand they are using every feature and then some, adding macros all over the place and using it almost as much as a programming tool as a spreadsheet. Now I understand why, its because too many companies have BOFH that lock the shit out of everything and won't let them having IDEs or DBs but what does every desktop seem to have? Excel and Access, so they use what they have. But that means that since they are really pushing it you have to keep up when it comes to those two, Excel especially.
A couple of my SMB customers had the same problem so i just got them the newest Excel and they are happy. Powerpoint works fine, Word works fine, the ones I deal with aren't big on Access (thank the FSM) so by just buying the one program that needed updating they are able to get along just fine.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
..M$ Office clearly is very dangerous. They have thrown everything you can think of into it: VBA Macros, Flash movies and probably an unspecified number of audio/video codecs you can embed into office docs.
The threat is not theoretical: It already did damage in the billions (if not dozens of billions) to RSA and all their stupid customers (Lockheed and many more).
Libreoffice is much more focused on the main task of document creation, and thereby much safer. But hell, who said the MBA types are enlightened people ? MBA studies are applied irrationality. "let's forget all those concerns. Just draw a list of features and the one with more features is declared winner. I only buy winner software !"
..just "Save As" Word 2007. Will generate a nice *.docx file. Probably you can also use *.odt, as these Agencies will use Word+COM to load the file. Word can load and properly display odt files. It can even save it !
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this ironic? I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back yet here you are complaining that a NINE YEAR OLD version of office won't deal with the latest formats other than as a viewer. Serious dude who supports NINE year old software besides MSFT? last I checked you get 5 years on Apple, I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0, if it would open at all or even install on a current Linux, yet MSFT is support software forever and still NOT have cruft and bloat?
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
you would use this approach:
1.) Write your letter and save as *.odt
2.) Write a script which does
2.1) unzip the odt file
2.2) Query a database or a CSV file for the next address and all that is attached to that (e.g. customer purchasing information)
2.3) perform any sed-operation (find/replace) you can think of on the XML files which came out of the odt+
2.4) zip the xml files again, copy to outbox, print
2.5) goto 2.1
That technique works for Office Open XML also. It is lightning-fast, if done properly; something which can't be done using COM.
So you claim to be a Unix user, but you are fascinated by MS Office. I say you are one of M$'s business partners and the Redmond propaganda department just pressed you into service.
..you try a FOSS toolset like SVN, Alfresco and Libreoffice. But yeah, overcoming the nicely packaged M$ shit is tough.
ftfs: But in doing so, Microsoft has jacked up prices on its old fee structure to make subscriptions seem like a better deal. And that could really leave a bad impression with financially struggling consumers."
Good. Can they please make it so that nobody can pirate their stuff too? We know they can. Ballmer keeps making threats that he will. With DRM and signed software installs, the technology is there.
--
BMO
We all know that Barbie Women get all the attention. Even if they aren't that pretty from an "internals" perspective. Same with software. Sex sells.
Linux, SVB, LaTeX, Libreoffice are more like a bulky Russian mother. Can take hits, will still work under sever hardship. Doesn't take rape as a reason for suicide. But she does not look like a babe. Yeah, that's Linux.
..just as you did in the pseudo-innovations from NT to Win2k and from Win2k to XP. If you are so fucking stupid to buy an M$ product, then you have to endure all the fun of that show. If you are lucky, they won't destroy too much of NT and you will just get the 12th version of their GUI permutation.
How to do real sysadmin work in the face of UAC and non-working Admin accounts is left to you as a homework exercise. You fucking Idiot !
..you are a "poor" student. Devoid of all alternatives you are "forced" into using expensive crapware.
Certainly you cannot use one of these (at least) 300 high-quality open source software packages/standards from gcc to SPICE to do real engineering.
How manny dollars do you get per sentence from the Gorilla of Redmond ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
M$ Access. Why would you want Postgres if you can do it in a retarded way plus you can code in MS Brainfuck (VBA) ! Think THAT !
I thought your Paymaster Ballmer was a propaganda genius ? Can't he supply you with new lies ? "I am a passionate Linux user, BUT blabla". I have read that at least 50 times now. Call Redmond and request new memes and tactics. I am getting bored...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar_r2kE9Ej4&feature=related
Microsoft is a cunt. Anyone who uses Microsoft products is a cunt. Don't be a cunt.
..there is little control. All you have to do is to unzip the (say) pptx and then nicely format the XML (it is all in one line initially). At that point it is very much like HTML. There is even a website documenting all tags, albeit in a quite thrifty way. All they have left is VBA and a cache of patents.
> Only dirty open source hippies expect things to be free. The rest of us are perfectly willing to pay for things
Don't kid yourself. Windows users steal anything that isn't nailed down and then pass it around like party favors.
Microsoft's market share was built on this.
A Linux "freeloader" is far more likely to acknowledge that there is a license.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
...which covers about 95% of the users.
Not everyone should need to waste money on a Word Perfect wannabe just because some corporation managed to convince everyone that their file format is some kind of defacto standard.
It's about on par with everyone being expected to install a copy of the Oracle database.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Plenty of Free Software but that's not the point.
The OP was talking about FORMATS, not software. You're far to eager to engage in lame trolling to actually read what you're responding to.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's a WORD PROCESSOR. It's something that should have been a well understood problem 20 years ago. Never mind 9.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
To impress other corporate drones, a drone needs to draw nice diagrams and slides. M$ gives the drone the tools to do that. That is why the drone loves M$.
Also, M$ gives the drone the impression he is a "computer expert" by supplying all these nice graphical bullshit sysadmin GUIs. In reality all it does is create lots of security risks and misconfigured systems.
But hey, it is all perception. Especially in the World Of Bullshit Bingo. That is how we call it in Denglish.
Google gives a comparable service away for 'free', making users into the product, as strange as it may seem to come out in favour of MS over google, I'd rather pay for software than have someone scanning my data for marketable keywords. Granted, Microsoft will probably try and do both, but we can always hope not.
Microsoft already does both. Whatever Google gives you "for free," Microsoft offers a comparable service.
Office 365 is not that, though. Office 365 is a subscription to the desktop Microsoft Office applications, plus some online service add-ons that arguably offer more value than what you can get on the web for free. Microsoft is also restructuring the licensing of the perpetual-license versions of the software so that the subscription license looks more attractive.
Breakfast served all day!
..I would point out that all things business are "social". Business IS social interaction linked to money.
..beats the crap out of 99% of Windows "solutions". Because it is normally done by people who have some clue about IT and not by the amateurs who permeate the Windows world.
Centralized control over databases and even computing resources brings a lot of advantages and efficiencies. Security problems mostly disappear. Massive computing power, IO bandwidth and memory capacity can be allocated to a task when required.
The main problem of the mainframe people was that they were often disconnected from their customers, who needed more "agility". The PC empowered amateurs to perform their little computing tasks without going through bureaucratic bullshitting. Unfortunately, the amateurs then thought they could do anything.
Now we come back to the world of centralized computing by the means of Google and the "cloud".
Formats and software go hand in hand. I seriously cannot believe that anybody working with Office doesn't run into this.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Support Open Office.
Uhh before you wharrgarbl you MIGHT want to see what the grandparent was talking about, specifically Excel which if you've ever dealt with Excel jockeys you'd know they ALWAYS use the most bleeding edge features, since they treat it more like an IDE than a spreadsheet.
Now is this the best way to do things? of course not but as long as we have BOFH that won't let users have an IDE but WILL let them have Excel and Access this is reality. Again we are talking about a 9 year old version, no shit its not gonna support the latest scripting and macros.
finally how does that change the fact that the same thing Apple and Linux get praised for, "cutting the cruft" and losing BC is EXACTLY what everyone is complaining about when it comes to MSFT, only with the opposite argument? MSFT is already 3 versions past 2K3 yet you expect them to backport every thing just because somebody wants to use 9+ year old software? tell me, do you think MSFT should be forced to support XP until 2020 because a few don't want to let go?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
One of the reasons why those idiots over at the open source end wanted an "open" format was because there are some professions (law, architecture, science, etc.) that need documents to be 'readable' after more than one or two software release cycles. Example: "Sir, you claim you have a deed for this property? Yes, I paid it off 15 years ago, there is an electronic record of it along with this paper. I see the paper, but we have no electronic record we can read." ...and God help the homeowner who had the paper copy in a safety deposit box at the bank that was robbed. No records, no house, or at least no proof. Now think about electronically scanning ancient documents (eg: an ancient codex) to allow wide study by scholars worldwide. What is the point if the format is unreadable in 3-5 years? The ODF format (those silly open source people) was designed by a large group including Adobe, IBM, Xerox, Boeing, and the Vatican Library among others to be widely useable and static so that new versions of software all hit the same target and a document created 5-5000 years ago is still readable (or at least the format is documented and can be made readable). Microsoft formats are all undocumented (likewise their OOXML), and they go out of their way to make their products incompatible with any of their products older than 2 release versions. And people still pay for and use their stuff. WTF?
We need something faster and has more functionality than Office
"More functionality"? Office is a bloated pile of crap because of the excessive and redundant features. What used to be a pretty useful wordprocessor back about 1992, Word 5, is now so feature laden that hardly anyone uses or even knows a tenth of its features.
I edit books and authors send me files in Word. I have yet to see one -- whether a businessman, doctor, or university professor -- that knows what a Word "style" is. They one and all treat it like a typewriter. Few of them seem to be able to spellcheck.
The only reason anyone upgrades is because they have no choice when they buy, or they have to be able to read the file format. My daughter demanded I get it for that reason, as her teachers distribute files in various MS Office formats. I installed Ubuntu on her laptop and she now uses Libre Office. It works, it's free.
Via windows update MS knows who's cracked their copy of Office, and even Windows -- They give the invalid OSs updates for fucks sake! You know why? Because if they didn't those fuckers would use some Free Software. Cracked solutions will continue to work, no because MS is incapable of preventing the software from operating, but because if they do prevent it from working there are now alternatives. They'd rather you buy than pirate, but they'd rather you pirate than use Free Software! Heh. Sit back, it's glorious popcorn time.
In my new software development model, I only get paid to do work. You all get the copies free of change. However, I've listened to your comments and have several new feature suggestions that can now be purchased. Once you've pledged enough to actually fund a feature (kickstarter style), then I do the work for the money, and you get what you want, and I get what I want, and everyone's happy without any artificial scarcity.
Let's face it: Copyright is fucked. The problem with software (and music, and movies) is that we try to use Artificial scarcity to market them. The bits are in near infinite supply. The coppies are not scarce. Economics 101: If supply is infinite, price is zero regardless of cost to create. So, instead of working for free then trying to extort money from you via artifical scarcity laws, why not just withold what is scarce until you're willing to pay for it? What's scarce is my ability to make more software, music, movies, games, etc. My work is what's scarce, the output of my work (the bits) is not scarce. I should be trying to market my work (ability to configure the bits), rather than do work and gamble on whether or not enough people will like the output enough to purchase it after the fact -- That's fucking asinine.
If you can't sell ice to Eskimos as a legit business strategy, then why is selling 1's and 0's to folks with GHZ copy machines (computers) a legit business strategy? Hint: It's not. Your digital economy is FUCKED.
In the days before the personal computer revolution, all software* was by subscription. Companies and universities bought hardware form the IBMs, Honeywells, DECs, and Amdahls of the world, but then paid a subscription fee for support in the form of maintenance and upgrades.
Then the microcomputer came along, and there was no software for it at first, so people wrote what they needed. Some of it was good enough that people were willing to buy it, at retail, just like milk or bread. Some software vendors would support purchased software with upgrades, either free for a time or for small fees, but it wasn't subscription-based.
Microsoft was one of the biggest forces in the world of boxed retail software. Remember the Windows 95 midnight release?
A couple of decades or more later, and now Microsoft decides that the "pay forever" model of the giants it supplanted is the right path. While it is something of a regression to old ways, it's also an outgrowth of the absurd situation we've come to in copyright and licensing laws.
What other models are there now? Apple sells you the hardware (computer or phone) and you get the patches and minor updates for free, but they push you to upgrade your hardware relatively frequently -- iPhone 6 anyone? Ubuntu gives you the OS, but they have deals with corporate partners and will probably be pushing ads into the os soon. A number of vendors give you the software, upgrades, and source, but charge you for the kind of "call up somebody and get this fixed now" support that management likes.
The situation Microsoft is in may be unique, however, because they can no longer convince consumers -- or most corporations -- to get on the upgrade treadmill, thus they've lost their steady income stream. MS can't get their customers to cough up more money on a regular basis for the next version. Who can blame the customers when the difference between Office 2010 and Office 2013 is, well, what exactly is different, other than Metro? Why should anyone upgrade?
This inability to keep pumping their customers for additional money to upgrade is the main driving force behind the subscription model. With a copyright regime which increasingly says the user only "rents" the software, and declining revenue from the Office cash cow, Microsoft really has only once way out: charging you a monthly fee for the privilege of editing your letters and calculating your spreadsheets.
*footnote: except software you (the company, the university) wrote yourself.
I THINK I remember dealing with a brand new XP machine with Works preinstalled from Dell
You remember right but it goes back even further. My first HP machine had a copy of Microsoft works. This was back when windows 98 was new and computers would cost $999. Back in those days people began to believe that they needed to get a quality word processor for the price of the machine. At least we began to get computers that included something to use if you were in school, but it was fairly sad when you actually went through with installing Windows full version from scratch in some other computer and finding that all you had was notepad and wordpad. Even today I have mixed feelings when I receive some crippled word processor in a new machine
First, I am one of the first to hit the M$ shills as hard as possible. It is a nasty corporation and they deserve all beating they get.
But subscription is also done by FOSS companies such as Redhat. They call it "support contract". I do not think that either payment method is more or less evil than the other.
Thinking about costs, all software engineering companies have recurring costs in the form of their employee salaries. M$ does not hire people just for Win7 and then lays them off. Especially the senior people need to have a very deep understanding which only comes from long experience. Key Windows NT people are on board since NT 3. Equivalent things can be said about Linux.
In addition to that, bugfixing is very, very expensive and it is an open-ended activity. For all of these reasons it makes sense to replace a one-time purchase model by a subscription model. It aligns income with costs. "software does not age" is not a correct statement in the age of the internet, as it nowadays requires all sorts of security fixes on a regular basis.
In my opinion the problem with M$ is that they are extremely paranoid. They cannot live with competition from Wordperfect; they have to crush it. Neither could they live with competition from Netscape; they crushed it. They could not live with competition from Lotus; they crushed their office business.
Funnily, they have destroyed so many of their competitors that a wholly different business model has sprung up: Subsidized software development by the likes of Google and IBM, which results in high-quality software given away for free. Examples are Linux, firefox, OpenOffice, Chrome, Android and many more. So M$ has actually created much more dangerous competitors than they had when Netscape and Wordperfect were still alive. But yeah, they deserve all they get for their nasty behaviour.
Dude, you are seriously confused.
I mean we hear constant screams about MSFT having too much cruft and backwards compatibility holding things back...
The screams about backwards compatibility holding things back must be in your head? I don't hear them.
I doubt very seriously you'd get anything but word salad if you tried to open the latest LO ODF files on OO.o 1.0
Your point is asinine. Why would anyone run an antique version of a free software suite when the newest version is only a download (or a free mailed CD) away?
Software gets new and nifty features, no-one says that this is a bad thing. Proprietary software houses, however, essentially run an upgrade racket driven by incompatible new formats. Some are worse than MS, Adobe, for instance, offers no way to save in older formats and sneakily "upgrades" older files when opened in a newer version. CS4 even did this without the user having saved the document. My brother, who uses a Macbook, constantly mailed me docx-files with schedules for conversion when in university as his professor refused to save in an older format, and the tables used didn't show up in free suites. When confronted about this, the professor wasn't even aware that this could be an issue, and he told my brother that he "didn't have time" for pandering to students on off-brand devices. Nobody wins but Microsoft in such a situation.
For OSS this is never an issue as upgrades are free. The problem is that proprietary software upgrades will always incur significant costs. If you can't even admit that this is a serious advantage of open source, and one that can even be decisive for certain users, you are deluded. It dawns on me that you are likely a strong fanboy or even a paid shill, in which case you will admit to no arguments against your loyalties, and my post is wasted.
The fact that they even gave you a compatibility pack at all was more than the other guys, so maybe if you need it that bad you might want to just pick up a copy of something from this decade, yes?
"More than the other guys?" How on Earth can you say that with a straight face? The "other guys" give you their whole fucking product for free... Yup, astroturfing confirmed.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
If your experience is limited to non-UAC systems, you have never sysadmin'd anything. Every OS except windows (pre-Vista) uses some form of UAC -- in Unix land, it's called root. For some reason no one but you thinks of this as a problem. For some reason everyone else can get their work done. For some reason you're clinging to a decade-old OS.
That reason is left as an exercise to the reader.
This is some sort of alternative timeline thing, right ?
Unfortunately, not. You can see it at its most visible in that both Windows and Office want to be activated via Internet connection, although the truly paranoid can call for an activation code, instead. But if you attach a network traffic monitor, you'll see regular conversations. How else do you think you're getting those update alerts?
It's not just Microsoft, of course. Lots of third-party products also converse regularly. So do some dirty-hippy open-source apps, although they normally allow you to disable that feature (AND honor your wishes when you say to do so).
Oh lord its a FOSSie! I love how new features are fine...as long as you don't get paid because that's BAD wharrgarbl! Communism failed you know, LO is frankly years behind simply because they don't have the money to keep up. Would you like a list of huge major problems in Linux? Again nobody pays, problems don't get fixed. they get fixed in SERVER, because corps pay millions to get it fixed, see red hat becoming a billion dollar company for proof they pay, desktop no money for free so you get free crap.
And if I give you a shit sandwich for free...are you gonna thank me? because you are welcome to have my garbage if you want it, why aren't you thanking me? if your argument worked we'd all be using free OSes and nobody would buy MS Office, the fact that people steal MS Office by HUGE amounts compared to taking LO for free (last figures i saw was 8 to 1) so your entire argument? Worthless. does Apple support 9 year old versions of iWork? Nope. Does LO support 9 year old version of OO.o? And do NOT say its free, because its bloated by 300%, run OO.o 1.0 and compare its usage to the latest LO so it is NOT free, its sucking resources which I paid for, so why is it not supported?
Its not supported because it would bloat the living hell out of the program....just like...supporting versions that were replaced ages ago in MS Office. If they don't like it? welcome to take your hippy dippy free crap, the fact that they don't WANT your free crap? should smack you with the cluebat.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Even with AdBlock I still get commercials. How the heck did you ever get modded up? You must have modded your own MS commercial up. It looks like you copy-and-pasted straight out of your file of stock responses. Maybe with a tiny addition here and there for the /. crowd
So annoying!
I'm well aware of that. I was referring to: "Meaning that there's a fairly decent chance that Microsoft could simply switch it off on you. Although more likely, based on their past history, you'll simply discover one day that the latest version of Windows won't run Office 2003 properly any more.".
MMOs built an industry on Software as a Subscription. Now they move to the F2P model, it still is at a fundamental level Software as a Service\Subscription.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
They may change my mind about subscribing to more of their software thanks to Mr. Gates.
Oh, not this shit again... Neither Photoshop nor MS Office made any noticeable progress in at least a decade, all they do is messing with the user interface.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
hairyfeet is again to the Microsoft's rescue, insulting people who are smarter than him...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
... wharrgarbl! ...
Since you utterly failed to address the actual content of my post, going off on a senseless and incoherent rant instead, I consider this discussion to be over. Have a nice life.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Neither Photoshop nor MS Office made any noticeable progress in at least a decade, all they do is messing with the user interface.
You, sir, are a talentless prick who probably hasn't really used Photoshop, and if you have, you barely understand what tools are available, how to use them, or what can be done with them. Maybe you could crop an image or add some poorly aligned text. In short, Alex Belits is an uninformed asshole. GIMP is perfect for re/free-tards like you. Enjoy it.
I for one hope that this subscription module succeeds - as long as the monthly/yearly fee is "within reason".
Everyone expects "free updates" and "upgrades" ... I disagree with that. If the software has fundimental flaws, those should be fixed for free, but updates/upgrades should be paid for. If you buy a car, you can't demand that the manufacturer "upgrades" your vehicle for free when 6 months later the same model is offered with something "improved".