Why Office 2007 won't sell

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 10 October 2006 19:47

Opinion and Analysis

I have just taken another cook's tour of Office 2007, creating opening and closing documents. Since I'm far more proficient with Word than either Excel or PowerPoint, I spent most of my time playing with the word processor but I did peruse the other packages. It looks pretty good but it won't sell well.

• Your IT
• Business IT
• IT Industry
• IT People
• IT Policy
• Reviews
• Announcements
• Science

There are a number of reasons. However, the main one is that, unlike Windows Vista, Office 2007 is not a must have. People do not need to part with $500 or so to upgrade to a new version of Office. In fact, they will be reluctant to do so and, unlike the case with Vista, there are now viable alternatives.

When users upgrade to a new computer, it will come pre-installed with Vista so they have no choice there. However, new computers don't come pre-loaded with Office 2007 and users will happily stick with Office 2003.

Microsoft may try to stop users from installing their copy of Office 2003 on a new machine regardless of whether they trashed their old computer or not. If that happens, unlike the case with Vista, users will have a choice.

After spending money on a new computer and almost as much again on Vista, users will have a choice of spending hundreds more on a fancy revamped version of the Office they already had, which has a substantial learning curve attached to it. Or they can opt to install a compatible free open source version such as Open Office.org 2.0.

There is no doubt that Office 2007 is a slicker product than Open Office.org 2.0. However, for most users' needs at home or in the office the open source product does the job. It's simple to install, there's zero learning curve, it's virtually totally compatible with Office 2003 and it doesn't cost a penny.