CNN says...new OFFICE a tough sell

Post #122,398

10/22/03 3:11:24 PM

[link|http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/22/microsoft.office.ap/index.html|NEW YORK (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. launched the newest version of its Office software,] kicking off a $150 million ad campaign in hopes of convincing customers that the upgrade is worth the cost despite a skittish economy.

and talk about denial

But Gates dismissed the challenge coming from open-source programs, including those written for operating systems such as Linux.

"The distance between what we have and what the free software has is greater today than it's ever been," he said. The new Office product's biggest competitors, he said, were its predecessors, most recently Office XP, released two years ago.

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. _{Fudd's First Law of Opposition}

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]

Post #122,410

by ben_tilly

10/22/03 4:24:36 PM

That might not be conscious denial

I would be unsurprised to find that Bill is right, that Microsoft has added plenty more features which are not to be found in free alternatives so that the gap in what they can do is larger than ever.

True, but irrelevant.

The gap that matters is the gap between what free software offers and users need. Nobody cares about a laundry list of features that they don't use. Sure, every one of the features added might matter a lot to someone, they all may have business reasons. But the people whose business needs are addressed by the new features are not the ones which Microsoft needs to worry about losing.

The is the classic mis-strategization that The Innovator's Dilemma walks through in detail. Try as it might, the customers who Microsoft can hear about new feature requests from are irrelevant to the product battle it is fighting.

Cheers,
Ben

"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]

Post #122,499

by static

10/23/03 9:16:35 AM

I don't think I care what Office can do that SO cannot.

In fact, I've found a feature that SO can do better than Office 97 can: bullets. I always found Word's bullets and autonumbers fiddly. In StarOffice they work quite a good deal nicer.

And in fact, the only thing that I liked in Word 97 that Word 6 couldn't do was long filenames.

Wade.

Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed

Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please

-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

Post #122,458

by Andrew Grygus

10/22/03 11:46:59 PM

Costs up to 40% more . .

Can't put my finger on it at the moment, but I read somewhere (within the last 24 yours) comments by one of the market research firms saying Office 2003 would cost customers 20% to 40% more because many of its new features require purchasing additional Microsoft server products.

[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]

Post #122,485

by kmself

10/23/03 6:35:21 AM

Typical, though sneakier than usual

MSFT usually hits its earlier adopters with higher prices. With time, they start cutting prices and, since they control supply, curtailing availability of earlier products (which of course compete against the new stuff). What's different here is that the costs are being hidden in additional server-side software and HW requirements. Expect to see this played out in the press, particularly Linux-friendly sites.

\r\n\r\n

The other issue of course is that people don't upgrade. It's not O2K3 that's going to be loaded onto existing systems, it's that new systems will have 02K3. The problem then are the network services necessitated, making a heterogenous network difficult. Which of course pushes corporate adoption back 12-24 months.

\r\n\r\n

If this script plays out as expected, I anticipate an announcement from IBM in the next 30-60 days that 02K3 is expressly not allowed on the corporate network due to security or interoperability problems with existing systems. Tensions with Sun make OOo or StarOffice adoption slightly problematic, though I'll suggest it's possible. And there's always the possibility that a wholesale migration to GNU/Linux will be announced.

--\r\n Karsten M. Self [link|mailto:kmself@ix.netcom.com|kmself@ix.netcom.com]\r\n [link|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/|http://kmself.home.netcom.com/]\r\n What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?\r\n [link|http://twiki.iwethey.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/|TWikIWETHEY] -- an experiment in collective intelligence. Stupidity. Whatever.\r\n \r\n Keep software free. Oppose the CBDTPA. Kill S.2048 dead.\r\n[link|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html|http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html]\r\n

Post #122,515

by bepatient

10/23/03 10:01:20 AM

IIRC...

the document control features, autopublishing and several of the "groupware" functions require MS server products to make them effective. There was a hint of that in the article.

Lord knows I'll be forced to use this crap before long becasue of the inexplicable connection of our parent company to MS products. An affinity for Jerry Lewis and Bill Gates...it must be in the wine.

If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. _{Fudd's First Law of Opposition}

[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]

Post #122,521

by Andrew Grygus

10/23/03 10:21:43 AM

Yes, this is very true . .

The digital rights management in particular is completely dependent on the 2003 rights server. An interesting point is that the rights server has to be exposed to the Internet or recipients of protected documents and emails will not be able to read them. Expect this to be a convenient entry point for more worms and exploits.

The colaboration features also depend on Windows 2003 server and some "value add" server applications. I suspect they're building a structure so complex and intertwined it'll develop a reputation for disrupting business due to obscure "this behavior is by design" problems, outright failures and the inability of many organizations to administer it. Costs they will be arising.

[link|http://www.aaxnet.com|AAx]

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