it's a stupid move on their part i think, next they'll be encrypting the entire OS so that nobody can even use it "in the interests of security"! I think X11 had it right with his X11 DOS, i seem to remember him saying that X11DOS is the most secure operating system ever due to its not actually letting you run any programs or open any files!
Also, i don't reckon people will be buying this new OS, the sole reason people would is that whole thing about it being bundled in the shop. These computer salesdroids still talk to customers as if windows is a necessity, i almost barfed last time i was in a computer shop (to get some blank CDs) and this poor woman was being confused by this dumbass in a tie smugly telling her that she would need to pay for windows a second time if she couldn't locate her original windows CD. No she fucking wouldn't! she could use linux, which is free, and once installed, linux with KDE is just as intuitive as windows and a lot more stable.
Sorry, ranting again, if they seriously make it so the M$ office formats are not back compatible, i think that we will seriously be looking at an area where the M$ office formats will lose their dominance and within a couple of years we'll see a new struggle between LaTeX, staroffice, AbiWord and wordperfect formats as they battle to become the next defacto standard (my guess is wordperfect will come out top for documents).
[ May 30, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]
