Microsoft's Master Plan

[preacher]

http://www.betanews.com/article.php3?sid=1035914045

Microsoft is about to stop supporting win9x/Me. They are creating programs that will only work with Windows 2000 and XP. It seems that MS office 11 will only work on computers that have Windows 2000 SP3 or have XP installed. The first time someone at a business starts using Office 11, everyone within the organization will be forced to upgrade to Office 11 since old versions cant view the newer version's documents. If that company runs any Win 9x/ME machines, they wont be able to run it at all meaning simply put the company has to buy every workstation a copy of Office, and upgrade all the pc's to XP, not to mention the fact that some of the older pc's dont have the hardware requirements for XP, so they have to buy a whole lot of new hardware. I can see people falling into this trap already. The thing is that its funny how all other programs work fine on 9x/Me, and I thought both 9X/Me and XP shared the win32 API, so how is it that this program wont work? Its a tactic by MS to make money. Dont fall for it. DO NOT BUY OFFICE 11!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hm_murdock]

I wonder how much DRM and spyware 2000 SP3 adds

[Ice-9]

SP3 for Win2K adds a few thingies but not that much actually, and everything is still easy to remove or shut down.
All you have to do is edit gpedit.msc and services.msc to disable automatic updates and stuff like remote registry manipulation
This one should tell people enough wouldn't you think? Well think again, they don't care!!!!!

I don't expect it to stay this easy though, M$ will make it harder and harder to escape the Bill's eye.
But I don't care I'm almost cured from that illness that is Microsoft.

[mobrien_12]

Forced obsolescence.  

They did this with DirectX also... hacking the DX8.1 installer so that it wouldn't work on w95 systems.  


It's so #$%^&#$ artificial and blatently greedy.

[Doctor V]

This is typical M$ behavior.  I wonder if people are actually going to wake up and realize that they don't really need Office11 for their business to function.  Then again theres the mentality of a suit.  The always want to have the biggest brightest newest software just so they can say they have it even if it gives them nothing at all.  They think:  you get what you pay for.  They don't give a rats ass what it does, they just are taken in buy its marketing.  Therefore, to spend 1000$ on useless bloated M$ crap, is a good investment.  Look at how many people today are actually using XP, thats proof.

V 0.8.7

[emh]

I find some of the comments on that article to be quite disturbing.  Someone said something to the effect of "If your computer is too slow/old to handle Windows 2000/XP, you should buy a new computer."  Why should someone buy a whole new computer just to run a new version of Office or Windows when the old version of both do the job just fine?  Windows 98SE is still a halfway decent operating system (comparatively speaking) if you pay attention to what runs in the background, and be sure programs you don't use very often don't load themselves into memory on startup.  (IE included.  IEradicator is an awesome program)  Of course, I'm using Linux now, and it's far better than Windows.

[jrigby]

OK now i am really fed up with MS's Bullsh*t now i am swiching over to linux give me your guys's honest opinion on the best linux with an easy install and clean whipe of windows ME.
Thanx guys

[beltorak0]

It's not that a company will just replace office 10 with office 11 for all 1,000 computers -- the hook is when office 10 is no longer available for purchase and companies expand their computer worksatations by, say, 10%.  who do you think gets those shiny new computers?  the mail room, or the top execs?  and once no one else can read all those "important" office memos written in office 11, the managers will replace all office suites with office 11.  Or they will listen to the "sage" advice of the M$ sales rep and replace them all at the start.

It's no longer planned obsolesence, it's forced obsolesence.

-t.

[jtpenrod]

quote: I find some of the comments on that article to be quite disturbing. Someone said something to the effect of "If your computer is too slow/old to handle Windows 2000/XP, you should buy a new computer." Why should someone buy a whole new computer just to run a new version of Office or Windows when the old version of both do the job just fine?

OTOH, that means that there will be lots of older, used, equipment that you can pick up real cheap, install Linux, and have a really decent system for a helluva lot less than buying new.  
_______________________________________
Live Free or Die: Linux

Their fundamental design flaws are completely concealed by their superficial design flaws.

[Zombie9920]

Of course, if you guys knew how the Microsoft OS life cycle works you would know that Win9x is almost at the end of it's supported life.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/desktop/business/components.mspx

This isn't a bad thing...really it isn't. Win9x needs to die. NT is so much better and is the future of MS OSes(which will continue to be the most widely used OSes ;P). With MS only programming for one kernel thier products will start to get better and better(will be more reliable/stable, more secure, will be more feature rich and will perform better). Office 11 has a long time to go before it goes gold and by time it goes gold the Win9x supported life cycle will be almost over.

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:
will be more feature rich

This proves that Zombie is either a Microsoft employee or has been assimilated (brain washed). That phrase is so worn out by Microsoft.

[Kintaro]

Zombie probably wrote the first Haloween Document.   ! I hope for Win9x to die, and WinNT! GOOOOOOOO LINUX!!!

Red-Hat 8.0 is very very very feature Rich!

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by Zombie9920:
Of course, if you guys knew how the Microsoft OS life cycle works you would know that Win9x is almost at the end of it's supported life.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/desktop/business/components.mspx

This isn't a bad thing...really it isn't. Win9x needs to die. NT is so much better and is the future of MS OSes(which will continue to be the most widely used OSes ;P). With MS only programming for one kernel thier products will start to get better and better(will be more reliable/stable, more secure, will be more feature rich and will perform better). Office 11 has a long time to go before it goes gold and by time it goes gold the Win9x supported life cycle will be almost over.

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

Zombie, I dont know if you have noticed, but a lot of people still use windows 9x/Me, Im not exactly sure how many, but Im guessing that there are still more win 9x/me users than XP users. A more secure/stable OS is a good thing, but forcing users to upgrade, even when their needs havent changed is wrong. The only reason that Office 11 wont work in win 9x/Me is that MS wanted to force upgrading on people.

[Calum]

it's "wrong", you say? it's how M$ make their money! and as far as i knew, all the 9x versions of windows are already unsupported by M$, except winME, or at least that was the impression i got from Microsoft.com last year when i was trying to find some patch to try and force windows ME to comply with my needs!

[Fett101]

quote:Originally posted by ThePreacher:


a lot of people still use windows Me

Those poor souls.