Stop Microsoft
All Things Microsoft => Microsoft as a Company => Topic started by: pkd_lives on 8 October 2002, 22:43
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Well this one appeared on the front page. It's actually rather sucsinct in what it has to say. i.e. When a software product is complete and a customer has the resources to run it, M$ loose out. Hence the need for subsciption software.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/05/1033538810345.html (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/05/1033538810345.html)
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Yeah.. typical Microsoft... "We screwed up, it's your fault."
Just like Bill Gates once said about Windows: "Windows is bug free. These so called bugs are user errors."
And a year later, Bill Gates said that Microsoft would bring out more frequent bugfixes. What's this Bill? I thought Windows didn't had bugs?
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Bah! Microsoft is blaming people because we have different views.
I saw this scheme it said on the box in a huge sticker (what I can remember):
Microsoft Office XP: $1299 Or you can pay only $400 a year for unlimited upgrades and technical support.
Bah! I'd pay the $1299 if I was forced to get it. I'm perfectly content with Office 2000 though (I know, it's M$ but I use it at school, it is basically a necissity to use MS Office). Office XP is just like Office 2000 so there is no need to upgrade. Better yet don't follow my example and use Open Source software.
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office 2000 is exactly the same as office 97 also.
some office suites are starting to be compatible with M$' file types anyway, although what we really need is for M$' file types to cease to be so much of a 'standard' and for people to stop rudely demanding their stuff in word documents.
This happened to my girlfriend this week. she submitted her work to her editor as text files and jpeg files and he responded with a nonsensical missive telling her to attach folders of word documents instead next time. what a dumbass, so now she will have to ring him up and ask him what he is talking about because sending pictures embedded in word documents, instead of jpegs via email seems really dumb, let alone his moronic 'send attachments as folders' comment.
And this editor uses a mac! what must the windoids be like!?!?!?!
sorry, rant over...
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
office 2000 is exactly the same as office 97 also.
some office suites are starting to be compatible with M$' file types anyway, although what we really need is for M$' file types to cease to be so much of a 'standard' and for people to stop rudely demanding their stuff in word documents.
This happened to my girlfriend this week. she submitted her work to her editor as text files and jpeg files and he responded with a nonsensical missive telling her to attach folders of word documents instead next time. what a dumbass, so now she will have to ring him up and ask him what he is talking about because sending pictures embedded in word documents, instead of jpegs via email seems really dumb, let alone his moronic 'send attachments as folders' comment.
And this editor uses a mac! what must the windoids be like!?!?!?!
sorry, rant over...
This guy is an arsehole and should be ashamed of himself as a "Mac" user. Thankfully, not every Mac user uses M$ word or Office, eventhough it would be very convenient in most cases when you have *.doc files lying around and can't get AppleWorks convert them for you.
Take me for example. I have numerous assignments written in Office 97 and I couldn't get them to open in AppleWorks. So I had to save them all as *.rtf files and open them with TextEdit (a text editor). Of course all my previous format was gone. No tables, no numbering, bulleting etc but who cares. As long as I'm M$ free I don't mind (http://smile.gif) . (This applies for Greek and not English *.doc files which AppleWorks opens correctly)
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the editor in question used to be editor of the daily telegraph. we don't know, but we wonder, why he is no longer editor there and instead he now edits a (fairly rubbishy) entertainment reviewing website.
Anyway, that's not relevant... why are M$ going to fail then?
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Because the only way they can continue selling large amounts of software like Office is by subscription - because we are currently at a dead end for such applications, the only way people will buy new office stuff is if it does something they really need, so they are trying to make people subscribe - which is failing...thanks to France, Australia and...bugger I've forgotten. I thought the article said it better than me.
Come on...pay attention at the back.
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I think there is a variety of reasons that will contribute to their failure, problem is, we don't know what will happen. That's why I am so uncomfortable, I mean what if alot of windoids don't mind TCPA, what if they do mind it eventually, but it is too late and irreperably intergrated into alot of computers? There is more reasons then this im sure.
I think it would be good if there was a site called "Microsoft watch". It lists everything that could damage MS, and everything that could strengthen MS. Every month it is updated with news on MS financial status, financial changes, happenings over the past month, and "prophecies check", any change in the status of a reason for failure or success is noted.
In addition, there could be a "case history", which starts from the begining of MS, and details all there ups and downs.
Cool site idea eh? Would be nice if someone here could try making a site like that. MES tells us that MS sucks, but opinions and randomly posted news articles are all we have to check their pulse.
[ October 09, 2002: Message edited by: lazygamer ]
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Plus we only talk between ourselves and not to people outside these forums on the net.
Hey its a good idea though, anybody want to lend me dreamweaver mx?
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quote:
I think it would be good if there was a site called "Microsoft watch". It lists everything that could damage MS, and everything that could strengthen MS.
The Register already does this fine job ;)
Almost every day you can find a rant about M$, and they're always among the first to mention stuff.
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Hey Panos,
If you have trouble converting Word files just save them as Word 6 files, they should open fine.
I don't know why you are having trouble, I regularly convert Word 2001 files back and fourth in AppleWorks.
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quote:
Originally posted by psyjax:
Hey Panos,
If you have trouble converting Word files just save them as Word 6 files, they should open fine.
I don't know why you are having trouble, I regularly convert Word 2001 files back and fourth in AppleWorks.
English doc files work great in AppleWorks but Greek ones unfortunately don't. So I was presented with two options:
A) Either buy M$ word for Mac which was immediately ruled out :D
B) or convert my files to rtf format (unfortunately saving them in Word 6 format doesn't work for the Greek language) and lose my formatted text
There are other solutions like OpenOffice but it's a major download (156 MBs I think) and I'm on dialup so I'll take a raincheck on that. There are also some cool little apps that convert character sets back and forth. Cyclone, which I've tried to use without success, is one of them.
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How much more could they possibly improve their office suite. Other than the interface and a few small changes and bug fixes, the office suites cant get any better. Its the same with the operating system itself. This is why so many didnt move from Win98 to Win XP. The only reason to upgrade would be so that if someone you know created a office xp document, you probably cant view it in office 97, so you either upgrade, or get left behind. $1300 so you can type seems a bit much. "But it has a spell checker!!!" I have my sister using Star Office on her Windows Me box, and she loves it. She has created a few power point presentations with it, and does her reports on it. Star Office isnt free, but $50, is a lot cheaper than $130 for the student evaluation version of MS Office, or the $1300 for the full version. As long as MS charges this outrageous price, people(including Windows users) will investigate alternatives
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quote:
Originally posted by Panos:
There are other solutions like OpenOffice but it's a major download (156 MBs I think) and I'm on dialup so I'll take a raincheck on that. There are also some cool little apps that convert character sets back and forth. Cyclone, which I've tried to use without success, is one of them.
try
http://www.interzone.gr/oo.html (http://www.interzone.gr/oo.html)
and
http://www.mathima.com/cdrom/ (http://www.mathima.com/cdrom/)
which i think will allow you to cheaply buy openoffice.org1.01 via mail order. I cannot read greek, so i am not sure how much it is or anything like that...
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quote:
Originally posted by Calum:
try
http://www.interzone.gr/oo.html (http://www.interzone.gr/oo.html)
and
http://www.mathima.com/cdrom/ (http://www.mathima.com/cdrom/)
which i think will allow you to cheaply buy openoffice.org1.01 via mail order. I cannot read greek, so i am not sure how much it is or anything like that...
Calum thanks for the links man! I really had no idea you could buy OpenOffice CDs from Greece so I feel a bit ashamed right now :rolleyes: that I hadn't noticed before.
However the first one interzone.gr doesn't offer the OS X version of OpenOffice, just the windows and Linux ones :( I don't know about the second site mathima.gr (mathima meaning lesson) because it was down for server maintenance but I'll check it out later.
Thanks again Calum (http://smile.gif)
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the OSX version of openoffice.org is incredibly new (only a couple of weeks i think!), so give it a month or two for it to be translated and then check again is what i would say...
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Yes I think I'll wait. I was really tempted to download it no matter how long it would take but then again I thought that it's still in an early stage so I didn't.
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Back to why M$ is gonna fail...
Economics plain, and simple. Warez is what's been keeping microsoft alive. Who out of the people you know, can really afford to pay $200 for a new M$ operating system, and then pay more than $200 for office software? When people realize that they require the latest M$ operating system to connect to palladium enabled sites, a lot of people are going to just say, "screw it!". Joe Public's computers are generally just gathering dust in the corner. Economics will more likely make Joe Public try Linux simply because of cost, not ease of use. And, Linux is becoming easier, and easier to use, all the time.
That is why M$ is gonna fail.
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quote:
"Although Office XP Subscription Licence was a popular offering, research showed the subscription model was not well understood by customers participating in the pilot. Customers and computer resellers from across New Zealand, Australia and France had the opportunity to be the first in the world to assess the subscription licensing model. From their feedback, we learnt that customers find subscriptions a useful method of purchasing software but are not ready to fully adopt this process... The consumer market just isn't ready for subscription-based software yet. The concept of software delivered as a service is new to consumers and right now the target market just didn't understand."
Here is the main reason M$ will ultimately fail. Notice just how arrogant that is! It couldn't possibly be due to the fact that these folks understood all too well just what M$ was doing, and that they just plain didn't like the idea, or that they believed that it wasn't right for their own situations. According to M$, that's not a possibility. The damn fools were just too st00pid to understand what a wonderful thing that M$ was trying to do for them. The entire corporate culture is incapable of admitting to an error in judgement, to being just plain wrong in reading the market or understanding their customers and their needs.
So long as they hold their own customers in such contempt, they will continue to mis-read the market, continue to alienate their own customers, continue to push the paying public to alternatives such as Linux, until, in the end, they have no more customers.
History repeats itself. This was the same mistake GM made in the 1960s and 1970s. It wasn't that all those Japanese cars were so good; it was that GM pushed away its own customers. Now look where GM is today: just another car company among many, no longer the King of the Road. (http://tongue.gif)
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