Office pirates beware: Microsoft about to put in the boot

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Monday, 30 October 2006

Page 2 of 3 So, if you’re using a pirated version, there are only two choices available to you. The first is to buy Office. As Office 2007 will be released by the time the Office Update checks with OGA come online in January, Microsoft is no doubt hoping very much that the new Office 2007 interface along with all its other goodies will be more than enough to convince you to hand over the cash. And while Office 2007 is an incredible, long overdue upgrade to the Office line, and is indeed the version of Office being used to write this article, the reality is that most consumers out there are familiar with the Office most known today. Starting from Office 95, then 97, 2000, XP and 2003, the interface has remained largely the same. The drop down menus have simply gained an avalanche of new features with each new version, along with other tweaks and back-end stuff that many may never use at all. We know this because Microsoft was surprised to discover that the top 10 features requested for Office 2007 were features already available – people simply didn’t know how to find them. That’s one of Microsoft’s rationales for introducing a brand new interface – for making all those features much easier to find and use – but as it comes at a cost, it might take a while before many people find out for themselves, by reading about it in the IT press, seeing it on a friend’s computer, seeing it in stores or buying a copy, installing it and using it for themselves. This is where your second choice kicks in, especially as most people are familiar with the existing interface. As Office 2007 is so different, some people will prefer the existing interface as offered in the current-generation Office and all the Office clones. These people will be more likely to learn the interface of one of the Office alternatives, whose number has been growing steadily, especially at the hard to resist price of free. Office has always had a competitor in the Corel WordPerfect Office Suite. While it has had many names and owners over years, it isn’t free, but  it’s much cheaper than Microsoft Office 2003. Much more of a threat to Microsoft is the Open Office suite. The menus are different to Office, but the price is free, and for some, that’s enough to ease any transitional interface pain. Other alternatives include Google’s new Docs and Spreadsheets, its packaged combination of its Calc spreadsheet and Writely word processor. It’s also free. The Office alternative that most closely resembles Office 2003 right down to menu bars is ThinkFree’s Office. << First page <   1 2 3 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

< Next story in category		Previous story in the category >

Visitors last 30 days Suscribers

904,266 13,751