__/ [ Gordon ] on Thursday 29 June 2006 13:00 \__
> Mark Kent wrote:
>
>> I'd want some persuasive reason to spend money on something from
>> Microsoft, which won't run on most platforms and is proprietary, as
>> an alternative to using something which is open, and will run on most
>> platforms, and has no purchase price.
>>
>> It's hard to imagine why anyone would even consider buying Office 2007
>
> Interestingly, there's been a slow-down of upgrades in the business world:
> Office 2000 was SO much better than Office 97 that almost everyone
> upgraded; The marginal increase in functionality provided by Office 2002
> was not as great as that from 97 to 2000 so not as many upgraded; and the
> perceived increase in functionality between office 2002 and Office 2003 was
> very little for the large additional cost, so a very great number of SMEs
> did NOT upgrade to Office 2003. Of course that doesn't take into account
> the support factor such as security updates - eventually ALL MS Office
> users will probably be forced to upgrade or reject MS Office
> altogether.....
That's an intersting point, Gordon. I might also add a
neglected factor here, which is backward compatibility
versus extension. One reason why businesses are often forced
to migrate are other departments whose use of Office
requires recency of versions from their partners, for
version compatibility. Take, for example, OpenOffice 1 and
Office 2003. Next week I'll be presenting at a conference
and the format of the presentation will be PowerPoint. I
never touched PowerPoint (not in many, many years), but my
Supervisor embedded elements (namely animations) that as
OpenOffice 'sanitation' will lose.
Half a year ago I protected against the organisers of
another conference because they forbade the use of
JS/CSS/XHTML presentation (just open in Web browser), as
well OpenOffice. Microsoft Office (PowerPoint) was
prescribed, but why? After some persuasion they permitted
the use of OpenOffice. The introduction of ODF is yet to
have considerable impact as it makes some fine headlines and
raises awareness. There is a cost to fighting your own wars
because your colleagues soon begin to perceive you as a
formats/platform Nazi and relationships are being eroded.
And again, why? Because <Nobody ever gets fired for buying
from Microsoft>^tm?
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