What's behind Microsoft's Office moves?

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You don't know what you're talking about

See, if you - and all of the other people out there that enjoy bashing Microsoft at the drop of a hat - did any research, you would know that XP does NOT have a lock-in, really. If you purchase the Pro version, it does NOT lock itself to your hardware, and the same goes for version sold to corporate clients that will install it automatically on many systems using a site license. When you have the Pro version, you're not required to do ANY kind of activiation, by calling Microsoft or in any other way. I'm sure they'll do the same thing with Office. And, seeing as how 99.9% of the people that use Office do so at work, it will be the same situation for them as well: their IT administrator will set up a site-wide install on their network server, and the application will be installed on every applicable machine in the office automatically - same as can be done with Windows 2000 and Windows XP Pro.

Do some research into the actual situation before pretending you know what you're talking about, please; and the same goes for all of you other Apple and Linux zealots out there. While I have no great love for Microsoft, at least I research the facts rather than just taking the word of the thousands of Microsoft detractors and haters out there, and in this situation I most definitely know the facts: "lock-in" will NOT be an issue AT ALL, in XP, Office, or any future software that has this type of software protection.

Another thing: Microsoft is NOT the only company to use such a copyright protection scheme. High-end audio & graphics software development companies have been doing so for years, and only after they gave up on a HARDWARE lock. Half of my 3D application plugins are locked to the specific hard drive they're installed on, and if I should ever need to install them on a new drive, or should I ever get an entirely new computer, I'll have to email the company, or use an automated online system, to get a new software key. It isn't a big issue at all, and the only time a problem would arise is if the companies in question should go out of business. The few times this has already happened to me, the products have either been purchased by another, competing software company, or the company released the code generator for free to the public domain so it wouldn't be an issue. However, what's the chance that Microsoft will be going out of business any time soon? Keep your silly, immature comments to yourself about this, and realize the truthful answer to this question: NOT BLOODY LIKELY.

Quit your complaining. If you don't like Microsoft's products, don't use them; ignore the standard that has allowed millions of users speaking hundreds, if not thousands, of different languages and dialects to communicate with each other freely and easily. Go download/purchase StarOffice or Corel's WordPerfect Suite, both of which are capable products (and both of which support the Office formats at one level or another, though StarOffice's support for the new versions & formatting of Office documents is beyond flaky), and crawl back under your rock, or back into your little computer technology fantasy world. The rest of us - the rest of the world - will continue to use the products - Microsoft's Office suite of applications - that satisfy our needs, have good support, and which are eternally compatible with the products just about everyone else uses - without complaining. Should Office every fail to meet my needs, I will use something else. However, when it comes down to needing a capable word processing or spreadsheet software, I have yet to find anything that can beat Word or Excel in ease of use, stability (the only stability problem I ever had w/ either is when Adobe Acrobat installed the useless Reader plugin in Office without my permission, and uninstalling it eliminated any issues - every other plugin I've used, such as the great Jaws PDF Creator - better and more useful than Adobe's applications & plugins for the same purposes) has worked just fine.

And on that note, farewell. I hope you, and all of the other detractors out there, will one day realize how lucky the computer world is that someone like Microsoft came along to standardize the way we communicate with each other using this wonderful computer technology. While they're not perfect, and there are some things I'd love to see done differently, I think they've done a damned fine job of making sure I can, for example, send this message and know it will get to where it's supposed to go (no, I'm not saying they invented the TCP/IP standards, nor the Internet, but they've handled making sure I can use it easily better than anyone else out there, including Netscape, which is less than dead any more).

//________________________
Regards,
- Nick Robalik
Digital.Soapbox
High-End Design & Development
http://www.digital-soapbox.com
nick@digital-soapbox.com

Posted by: info@...   Posted on: 12/02/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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