Comments on: Will Google Win When Microsoft Kills Office 2000?

By: Lindsay

Lindsay — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:41:42 +0000

In service industries, I see free software/web software gaining ground like mad. Especially when you have grassroots organizations founded to try to directly solve some of the world’s most pressing issues, they can’t afford to drop hundreds of dollars on software. When you break it down, you can feed a child for a year in many places for less than the cost of one copy of MS Office. For some, that may not matter, but for others, one child out of over six billion is still more important than having the newest, most secure MS offering.

It’s also helpful to be able to show up to any new potential job and be able to accomplish what you need to do without asking that organization to spend a dime on software for you. When you have a solid portfolio of Joomla! websites, GIMP edited imagery, and Google Apps tricks, it’s hard to find a service organization that doesn’t give your application a much more serious look. Sure, in this day and age, make sure you know how to work with the corporate giants’ software (but let’s be honest–who under the age of 35 doesn’t?), but why waste even comparatively small amounts of money?

What would the world look like if we stopped measuring cost in terms of dollars and cents and started thinking about the cost in terms of pictures of the people who get to live another day because we weren’t wasteful? I may be a dreamer, but at least I still have a dream.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:49:02 +0000

I agree. At work IT says use MS and we do. And it’s still very good, right? e.g. integration with Visio, going to give OneNote a spin and so on. Not going away any time soon.
Meanwhile at home on the PC, running XP. Still useful.
But on the netbook, it’s Linux baby, Ubuntu all the way! and ooO. I love not paying, being legit, and tapping into the open movement.
So Andy, yes, as Chairman Mao said, “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land.”
; )

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 20:36:32 +0000

Gosh Shadow, do you have to be so dismissive? If she weren’t asking a good question, there wouldn’t be so much interest in discussing it. You are the one who is looking the polemic twit that so bogs down the web. With all due respect.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:23:24 +0000

As I see it, the major flaw in the article’s argument is assuming that all the different available software packages are static. Office 2007 is a big improvement over earlier versions (once you figure out the new interface), and newer versions will also improve. Also, if you need the advanced features in Office (page layout in Word, fancy graphics or complicated spreadsheets in Excel, a relational database like Access, and Outlook for email and contact management), Office is still the most economic commercial version around.

What I think will happen is that we will continue to see more fragmentation of the market. Google Docs and Zoho are good, simpler interfaces and will attract more people as they feel more comfortable with not having the applications on their own computers. For my use, Office will continue to be preferred until Google and others can create a usable relational database and a good page layout program. Granted MS Publisher badly needs an upgrade and an interface tweak, but there’s nothing I’ve seen online which can match it or other layout programs.

Likewise, open source suites will also take a greater chunk of the user base as people become more comfortable with them.

Office will continue to be used in larger offices, as long as IT departments want to support one type of office suite and feel more comfortable with the security of their own networks than with cloud computing. In my opinion, Microsoft’s Achilles’ heel is in the area of graphics suites (like Adobe’s — also a high end and high price commodity) and in collaboration.

Where everybody wins is in choice. One prediction I think you can safely make is that the market will continue to splinter. Microsoft won’t go out of business anytime soon. If their market share drops too much, all they have to do is lower prices a modest amount. For those who can make do with open source or online software, they will also have better choices. The key determinants will be features, security, collaborative-ness, and ease of use, not who is paying for the coding for the software.

The other flaw in the article’s arguments is assuming that the number of computer users is static, a zero-sum game. As more people use the web and use computers at both home and work (and the library and the café, not to mention smartphones), all the different software platforms could grow their user bases.

By: Tank

Tank — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:43:33 +0000

As a financial consultant and a very tech savvy user.
Not gonna happen, for a power user Excel trumps all.

I could see word and maybe powerpoint going away. But not Excel or Outlook.

By: austinandrew

austinandrew — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:20:56 +0000

And really, who wants to transition to Office 2007? A real pain in the ass.

By: egghat

egghat — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:54:39 +0000

I think MS Office ist going back to the office :-) In SOHO-environments the price tag of MS Office is rather hefty. Though MS sees this and reacts. The Student and Home editions get cheaper and now contain three licences for you family.

And well I tried Google Docs, but I think it’s a kludge. OpenOffice ist far better. If you don’t need the sharing features of Google Docs there is no reason to use it.

By: Rishabh Mishra

Rishabh Mishra — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:06:17 +0000

Yes, one can manage using entirely free software.

An excellent example is myself. I haven’t actually purchased software in a long time, simply because I get along just fine on GNU/Linux and all the free, open-source applications that can be installed on it.

By: maristi

maristi — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:16:33 +0000

Talmage,

I thought you were making a decent case until I got to 4: less features than Notepad? That’s a little too much sarcasm to take you seriously. Since when does Notepad have concurrent editing? revision history with diffing? bookmarks, comments, tables, TOC, headers and footers, styles?

Now I’m not sure I should believe anything else in your post. For example I’ve been hearing about this office on the web thing for two years so, where is it? Smells like vaporware.

By: maristi

maristi — Mon, 25 May 2009 08:04:55 +0000

Seriously? We use it for all our internal documents at my small business. I would never try to use the G spreadsheet for complex financial models, but for our basic needs it works great. We especially love that employees in FL and CA can work on the doc at the same time and see what each other is doing.

I feel that this is such a generational thing: In a recent job I had to use Outlook and I hated that piece of junk, but all the old-timers loved it.

By: HappyPhil

HappyPhil — Sun, 24 May 2009 08:15:47 +0000

When I hear/read about people having difficulty with Google Doc’s, I have to remind myself that they are probably using a PC. I find the functions of Google Doc’s to work quite well using OSX and Firefox, (Safari couldn’t access all the editing features). The great thing about Google products is they continue to develop, so the person who had trouble with Google Doc’s, 3 months ago, might find it works for them today.

By: pwb

pwb — Sat, 23 May 2009 06:50:44 +0000

The move to Google Docs is on. Gdocs is very popular in the Bay Area startup community but not because of price. It’s because in many respects, Gdocs is better! The sharing features are powerful. The Gdocs feature sets are adequate for most knowledge works. The whole idea that employees at large corporations are sophisticated Office users is laughable.

But depending on how it is implemented, the real driver of migration to Gdocs could be the Windows 7 Basic 3 app limitation.

By: Georg von Köller

Georg von Köller — Sat, 23 May 2009 02:14:06 +0000

I fully agree with you. Open Office is an excellent option. Besides, it will make a transition to any Linux Distribution easier (people might feel quite tempted to do so!)

In my office, the last ms Office bought, was 2000… Now we are turning to Linux with OpenOffice.

We expect to cut costs and downtime of the systems by doing so.

By: Forone

Forone — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:24:38 +0000

In functionality, Google Docs can only legitimately be compared to MS Works, which is more than enough for casual home users and most cottage industry, but not sophisticated enough for mid to large cap enterprise customers. Home users who buy MS Office do so because they need it for complete interoperability with workplace installations and they will not be driving co-workers crazy trying to convert Office files to some other application. Writers who blather on about how great Google Docs or even Open Office is for their letters to Grandma or household budgets or work-from-home businesses are missing the point.

By: Gewinnt Google, wenn Microsoft Office 2000 nicht mehr unterstützt? | Innovation Wings

Fri, 22 May 2009 18:24:57 +0000

[...] Higginbotham publiziert im Weblog GigaOM einen ziemlich kritischen Bericht darüber. “Wozu soll ein Anwender 149 USD ausgeben für ein [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:57:41 +0000

Stacey, the fact that you can’t get security updates or patches after June doesn’t mean that Office 2000 will just stop working, does it? So you can happily continue to use it, as I expect anyone who currently is, will.

Office 2000 even supports the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats, so if docx/xlsx/pptx files start to proliferate, you are still ok.