[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.