Microsoft have stolen, alot. For example the graphical OS. Which they stole from apple - which in turn kinda stole it from xerox. See the movie about it! ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ ).
I bet you believe the Millenium Falcon can actually do the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs too. I mean, it was in a movie, so it must be true - right?
Truly fascinating when you consider that they had to cut millions from employee benefits in order to declare a profit last quarter.
Really? But they made $2.69 billion didn't they? How does cutting millions affect whether they're profitable or not?
Microsoft Reports Strong Fourth Quarter Earnings
Net income for the fourth quarter was $2.69 billion including a $208 million tax benefit from the reversal of previously accrued taxes.
Yet I think that 386sx booted up faster and ran Lotus and Wordperfect under DOS just as fast as anything out there on Windows today. Of course there are some advantages to windows but speed sure isn't one of them!
Really?? Both Excel & Word boot in something like a half second on my machine. And my machine is no where near the fastest currently available.
So perhaps DOS was faster (although I don't think it was), but I don't really care. I guess over a lifetime those tenths of a second may add up to a couple of minutes, but I'm okay with that.
I started with the official release but quickly abandoned that as there was so much it couldn't do it was pointless. So using the latest developers release 2.1.6.
Drag and drop replaces text on the clipboard
No drag and drop of images or tables
No floating images or floating tables (??? Really)
No vertical text orientation in tables
No diagonal lines in tables
No drawing tools
No resize cell without resizing table (alt-drag in Word)
Image resizing leaves image looking distorted
Custom Toolbars? Drag and drop of buttons?
No Reveal Formatting (Shft F1 in Word)
No Split screen editing of same document
No AutoSum feature in tables
etc. etc. etc.
I bet I could list pages of features that aren't in AbiWord. Maybe as someone suggested I just can't figure out how these features work, but the help file is just this side of useless if that's the case. I'm really troubled by no floating images, it seems like that feature has to be there, but damned if I could figure it out. Also ran into a ton of bugs. Lot's of redraw issues, and problems with the undo stack as well.
Open Office Writer is much closer to being a Word replacement than Abiword, but last time I checked I didn't have any problem finding tons of features that wren't in it either. So it basically boils down to that idea that these programs are only replacements for Word if you're lucky enough to not use/need the features they lack. If you're writing a letter to Grandma or a basic term paper, they'll probably do.
You've hit upon a huge problem Word has, and acutally has had for quite some time --making the features disoverable.
As a previous poster said many people only use 2% of the features of a program like Microsoft Word. Which is to say they use it just ever so slightly different than they would use a typewriter. Just about nobody reads the help files on software, so although Word can probably do a half dozen different things they'd find useful, they may never discover those features. I can't count the number of times on some messageboard where someone has said, "I wish Word could do this," only to have me reply, "It can" and show them how.
So that leads to the obvious problems like you've found in this review. I use something like Open Office Writer or AbiWord and I immediately notice all the things they can't do that Word can. While someone who only uses 2% of the features of Word thinks it's a direct feature match up.
How is that not their business model? What about the "upgrade" from 98 to ME? They changed the way the recycle bin looked. What about 2000 to XP? Again, they changed the look. Even NT 4.0 to 2000 was hardly a change.
Just upgrade every other version. Not like anyone is holding a gun to your head to do otherwise.
How many times in the last few years has Microsoft been sued based on some totally stupid patent? I'm sure after about the dozen-th time they finally just said, "Fuck it, we can play that game too and on a much grander scale."
So for all you Slashdotters who cheered everytime some little crap company sued Microsoft over some patent that was questionable at best...it looks like paybacks going to be a bitch.
-nod- As is often said, I and Bill Gates make an average of 2 billion a year, each.
Bill Gates is paid no where near $2 billion a year from Microsoft though. No stock options either. He (and now Balmer) are actually some of the lowest paid CEOs.
CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates each received $551,667 in pay and $313,447 in bonus last year, up from $547,500 in salary and $205,810 in bonus a year ago.
While Gates and Ballmer received no stock options, other Microsoft executives did:
How about paying for the time of all the admins that have been running around patching systems to get rid of it?
The patch for Sasser was available 3 weeks before the virus was released. I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay an admin to install a patch before the virus hits, than to pay him because he's busting his ass fixing a problem that he should have avoided.
Ummm... No. Appeals are made by all medium-to-large corporations that lose a case. Just for the principle of it.
Perhaps, but that still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft may think they have been wrongly found guilty. If you were found guilty of something you thought was legal, wouldn't you appeal?
Of course you would (assuming you could afford to). Why should Microsoft be any different?
If it makes you feel better, replace 'feel' with 'think'. Although my point remains the same.
In many instances, it's up to the courts to determine whether actions are legal or illegal. If you feel, think, believe etc. that your actions were wrongly found to be illegal by a lower court, you appeal.
As much as you'd like to pretend the law is black and white, unfortuntely it isn't.
He seems to base his whole article around the idea that Microsoft appeals simply to postpone any form of compliance so that they can continue to make as much money as possible.
I wonder if it occurs to him that maybe the appeal because they don't feel what they're doing is illegal, or at least feel the punishment handed out is too harsh.
so, if you make 100K per year, you will have no problem giving me a grand right? I mean, it is chump change compared to what you make annually.
The compariosn doesn't hold up when the sums become huge. A $1000 is meaningful if you only have $100K. Maybe it means you can't get that big screen TV this year, or take that trip to Disney.
But if you have $56 billion, $500 million isn't going to change your plans at all. What can you do with $56 billion that you can't do with $55.5 billion? Esp. when you're bringing in a $1 billion a month. Sure, it'll annoy you on principle, but you're still getting the big screen TV and taking the family to Disney.
Is MS also seeking investors for Apple and Red Hat?
Seven years ago, MS itself invested $150 million in Apple. So yes, when there is a benefit to Microsoft, it will seek to shore up its competitors.
I don't understand why this is a hard concept to understand. Look at the Lindows guys putting up a reward for people to hack the Xbox. Essentially the same thing - although even less of a point since a hacked Xbox gives very little benefit to Lindows.
a bank would make that kind of investment if micorosof gave them the idea they were going to acuire SCO or somethignsimular. of course that might be insider trading and pose a bigger threat then the other scenario
It's an investment, not a stock trade. Baystar didn't buy or sell stock in SCO, i.e. it's not insider trading.
End of corporate identity. End of the worst business ever to have existed. And good riddance!
Wow...so the future of Microsoft resides on this trademark case? I didn't realize it was that serious
Get a grip. Whether Lindows, Pindows, and Zindows operating systems are allowed to exist or not really isn't going to matter all that much. Microsoft will fight it, but at the end of the day the number of people who truly get confused by this won't be that high. Lindows has been around for awhile now and I don't know a single person who accidently bought it think it was Windows.
jobs is possibly the only guy in history who won in a deal with bill gates.
Bungie seems to have sold a copy or two of Halo. Probably sitting on a boatload of money too. I doubt they regret it. Sure, a couple people who work for Bungie and hate Microsoft might regret it, but they aren't the company.
The supidity of the statement, "No one has ever done a deal with Microsoft and not regretted it," is in the hundreds, if not thousnads, of deals Microsoft conducts every year that go without problems and therefore aren't reported in the press.
Slashdot Mirror
I bet you believe the Millenium Falcon can actually do the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs too. I mean, it was in a movie, so it must be true - right?
beta versions of SP2 have been available for just shy of forever, or you know, more than 6 months at least.
Truly fascinating when you consider that they had to cut millions from employee benefits in order to declare a profit last quarter. Really? But they made $2.69 billion didn't they? How does cutting millions affect whether they're profitable or not? Microsoft Reports Strong Fourth Quarter Earnings Net income for the fourth quarter was $2.69 billion including a $208 million tax benefit from the reversal of previously accrued taxes.
Really?? Both Excel & Word boot in something like a half second on my machine. And my machine is no where near the fastest currently available.
So perhaps DOS was faster (although I don't think it was), but I don't really care. I guess over a lifetime those tenths of a second may add up to a couple of minutes, but I'm okay with that.
Drag and drop replaces text on the clipboard
No drag and drop of images or tables
No floating images or floating tables (??? Really)
No vertical text orientation in tables
No diagonal lines in tables
No drawing tools
No resize cell without resizing table (alt-drag in Word)
Image resizing leaves image looking distorted
Custom Toolbars? Drag and drop of buttons?
No Reveal Formatting (Shft F1 in Word)
No Split screen editing of same document
No AutoSum feature in tables etc. etc. etc.
I bet I could list pages of features that aren't in AbiWord. Maybe as someone suggested I just can't figure out how these features work, but the help file is just this side of useless if that's the case. I'm really troubled by no floating images, it seems like that feature has to be there, but damned if I could figure it out. Also ran into a ton of bugs. Lot's of redraw issues, and problems with the undo stack as well.
Open Office Writer is much closer to being a Word replacement than Abiword, but last time I checked I didn't have any problem finding tons of features that wren't in it either. So it basically boils down to that idea that these programs are only replacements for Word if you're lucky enough to not use/need the features they lack. If you're writing a letter to Grandma or a basic term paper, they'll probably do.
You've hit upon a huge problem Word has, and acutally has had for quite some time --making the features disoverable.
As a previous poster said many people only use 2% of the features of a program like Microsoft Word. Which is to say they use it just ever so slightly different than they would use a typewriter. Just about nobody reads the help files on software, so although Word can probably do a half dozen different things they'd find useful, they may never discover those features. I can't count the number of times on some messageboard where someone has said, "I wish Word could do this," only to have me reply, "It can" and show them how.
So that leads to the obvious problems like you've found in this review. I use something like Open Office Writer or AbiWord and I immediately notice all the things they can't do that Word can. While someone who only uses 2% of the features of Word thinks it's a direct feature match up.
Just upgrade every other version. Not like anyone is holding a gun to your head to do otherwise.
So for all you Slashdotters who cheered everytime some little crap company sued Microsoft over some patent that was questionable at best...it looks like paybacks going to be a bitch.
Yes...it can be hard to place blame when Microsoft isn't an option.
-nod- As is often said, I and Bill Gates make an average of 2 billion a year, each.
Bill Gates is paid no where near $2 billion a year from Microsoft though. No stock options either. He (and now Balmer) are actually some of the lowest paid CEOs.
C|Net: Gates, Ballmer get slight pay raises
CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates each received $551,667 in pay and $313,447 in bonus last year, up from $547,500 in salary and $205,810 in bonus a year ago.
While Gates and Ballmer received no stock options, other Microsoft executives did:
As noble as ego and cash can be leastways.
The patch for Sasser was available 3 weeks before the virus was released. I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay an admin to install a patch before the virus hits, than to pay him because he's busting his ass fixing a problem that he should have avoided.
Perhaps, but that still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft may think they have been wrongly found guilty. If you were found guilty of something you thought was legal, wouldn't you appeal?
Of course you would (assuming you could afford to). Why should Microsoft be any different?
Cool - semantic games.
If it makes you feel better, replace 'feel' with 'think'. Although my point remains the same.
In many instances, it's up to the courts to determine whether actions are legal or illegal. If you feel, think, believe etc. that your actions were wrongly found to be illegal by a lower court, you appeal.
As much as you'd like to pretend the law is black and white, unfortuntely it isn't.
He seems to base his whole article around the idea that Microsoft appeals simply to postpone any form of compliance so that they can continue to make as much money as possible.
I wonder if it occurs to him that maybe the appeal because they don't feel what they're doing is illegal, or at least feel the punishment handed out is too harsh.
Apparently they have different info than you
For a console game, it's pretty to look at but the gameplay is adequate at best.
As far as the fine is concerned, Microsoft's least worry is that the Euro will gain against the dollar during the appeals.
The compariosn doesn't hold up when the sums become huge. A $1000 is meaningful if you only have $100K. Maybe it means you can't get that big screen TV this year, or take that trip to Disney.
But if you have $56 billion, $500 million isn't going to change your plans at all. What can you do with $56 billion that you can't do with $55.5 billion? Esp. when you're bringing in a $1 billion a month. Sure, it'll annoy you on principle, but you're still getting the big screen TV and taking the family to Disney.
If they're worried about they can just stick 500 Euros in Bill's savings account tomorrow and let it collect interest while the appeals drag on.
Bill could probably buy a new Ferrari (or 2) with the interest.
Seven years ago, MS itself invested $150 million in Apple. So yes, when there is a benefit to Microsoft, it will seek to shore up its competitors.
I don't understand why this is a hard concept to understand. Look at the Lindows guys putting up a reward for people to hack the Xbox. Essentially the same thing - although even less of a point since a hacked Xbox gives very little benefit to Lindows.
It's an investment, not a stock trade. Baystar didn't buy or sell stock in SCO, i.e. it's not insider trading.
Really? Because Word hasn't changed file formats in years - 1998 I believe. I must be getting a different version than you.
Wow...so the future of Microsoft resides on this trademark case? I didn't realize it was that serious
Get a grip. Whether Lindows, Pindows, and Zindows operating systems are allowed to exist or not really isn't going to matter all that much. Microsoft will fight it, but at the end of the day the number of people who truly get confused by this won't be that high. Lindows has been around for awhile now and I don't know a single person who accidently bought it think it was Windows.
Bungie seems to have sold a copy or two of Halo. Probably sitting on a boatload of money too. I doubt they regret it. Sure, a couple people who work for Bungie and hate Microsoft might regret it, but they aren't the company.
The supidity of the statement, "No one has ever done a deal with Microsoft and not regretted it," is in the hundreds, if not thousnads, of deals Microsoft conducts every year that go without problems and therefore aren't reported in the press.