Ant writes "PC World is reporting that Microsoft's Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program will require mandatory validation of Office software starting October 27 (2006)." From the article: "Similarly, starting in January, users of Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service, Microsoft added. Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005."
Are there any medium to large businesses out there using OpenOffice instead of Office? I am all for OpenOffice, but it seems unimaginable for the business world to wean its way off of Microsoft Word and Powerpoint.
I work at a fairly large chain that sells, amongst other things, computers. None of these PCs come with Word or Office, rather they come with Works. I explain that Works may do what they want. I explain how much Office is, and sometimes I mention you can get Open Office for free, since I don't realistically think many people are going to lay out the cash in store for the software. Know what they say typically? 'I know someone who's got office, I can get them to copy it for free.' I used to mention product validation but now I just don't bother. It's just they know Word and Office and that's what they want, by hook or by crook.
No kidding. PDF, Word docs, Excel docs and open docs all open great and convert nicely. We use it within the workplace on several desktops and have plans to move completely to it before moving to Vista or the next gen of Office.
Great timing too, I just uninstalled Office 2000 from my main desktop yesterday and installed OO 2.0.4. I thought about checking out the Office 2003 standard edition (free 30 or 60 day eval from MSFT) but decided against it; what would be the point? OO is more than enough for my personal use, and appears to open all my existing doc and xls files correctly (granted not very complicated files).
Microsoft is betting that Windows and Office are so easy to use versus the open source counterparts that they can afford to decrease the ease of use a little bit with these shenanigans, and still come out on top. Which makes it all the more important to make sure open source software is as user-friendly as absolutely possible, so end users aren't forced to choose between two difficult options.
Microsoft is betting that Windows and Office are so easy to use versus the open source counterparts that they can afford to decrease the ease of use a little bit with these shenanigans, and still come out on top.
What they are betting is that the number of users who get pissed off and quit using MS Office is going to be less than the number of people who pay for it instead of pirating it. And who knows, they might be right.
You are exactly right - that is the *exact* calculation that is performed. I've run the numbers myself, both estimates before the fact and 1-year, and 2-year follow-ups.
It's just simple. Everytime I looked at the numbers it was clearly a 8-to-1 or better ratio. That's 8 lost pirated users for ever lost paying customer.
In this case - I was a consultant on the project - when you consider that users on illegally copied versions of the software generated support requests at a much higher rate than legit users
Considering that a search on Amazon returned 334 hits just for books on Openoffice, I'm sure one of them can tell you how to insert in your spooky halloween clipart.
I know size doesn't count for everything, but still; it's there, it's significantly better than the OEM MS Office manual, and it is accompanied by fantastic community support, including developer feedback.
Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005.
Aren't you supposed to do user interface research before releasing a product out to the consumers? Why have your customers hate the product tbefore redesigning it to meet their needs?
One is supposed to do research before a product release. However, this is Microsoft we're concerning ourselves with. If you are Microsoft, you have all of the rights and privileges that come to those who dominate market share:
- The right to do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want.
- Have the belief that you know what's best for the consumer - even when they tell you otherwise.
- That you may abuse the "uneducated" consumer whenever you wish, via a graphical user interface, or
Microsoft is just one of the highest-profile examples of a company viewing their customers as criminals (Sony Music also comes to mind). Most of the piracy comes from people who would never buy the products in the first place. Punishing legitimate users won't end piracy and it won't boost sales. What is wrong with these companies? The more Microsoft blocks the use of Office the more likely alternatives will gain stronger position in the market. Which is fine by me, I'm tired of getting simple text documents in doc format.
Indeed. It is like software companies don't understand that a little piracy supports their dominance. Just like giving away software to schools actually helps "indoctrinate" new users.
you know, i dont feel punished when the screen pops up and asks me to validate windows. i dont feel that microsoft is treating me as a criminal either. by your logic you probably dont shop anyplace. look up next time you are in a store. see that black bubble? or even the obvious camera in mom and pops?. customer as criminal. ever buy gasoline, use the bank? to me it is a business trying to protect their bottom line.
who cares if most pirates never buy the product, microsoft shouldnt feel obligated to suppor
Okay, so next time you're at a store and HAVEN'T stolen anything imagine you leave, are accosted in the parking lot by security who then take away your... shoes, let's say. How does THAT make you feel?
I think that's why the majority of people hate Genuine Advantage and it's predecessors.
Most people never bought MS products because they were so easy to copy. That is why MS was the machine of choice. Buy the machine, steal the software. I saw many switch from Apple to Wintel as it became clear that on Apple one had to buy software, while on MS WIndows everything could be 'borrowed'.
Now MS is demanding that everything be paid for. How much this is going to effect the market is unclear. Most MS software I have owned has either been paid for by my school or places that I work through th
Is that not what those scanners at the door do? Why aren't you arguing getting rid of those? "I'm a paying customer, why am I being searched electronically whenever I leave a store!"
I don't understand Microsoft. The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is actually very easy to defeat, and I'm sure this new OGA will be just as easy. Why irritate customers when the people who intend to use without purchasing it will do so anyway? Did they buy a copy of Sony's playbook titled "How to piss away your loyal customers and then blame them for your lack of growth"?
I really don't get it. Why continue to do something after it's been proven ineffective?
Aero
That really shows how clueless the Slashdot crowd can be sometimes, considering how many places this comment pops up.
Yes, WGA is easy to defeat. Thats not the point. There are douzans of thousands (dare I say hundreds of thousands?) of people who copy CDs and install them all over (even large corporations!) because they don't realise that its 1 license per user. Read that again: They don't realise it, they don't know it. Many -consulting firms- (thats geeks here!) buy 1 MSDN Universal subscriptions, and use them for 20 developers, thinking its what you're SUPPOSED to do. Same with Windows, same with Office, same with everything.
These tools are ONLY meant to stop those people. No one else. Yes they will lose a few customers (a lot even) in the process. But they'll make it back up. You have no idea how many people I know purchased legit copies of Windows just because of the original WinXP's activation scheme, going "Wha? You mean if you own the CD its not enough to install it on my 8 computers? How come?", until they got explained how things work in the non-free world.
Users absolutely hated the first iteration of the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program, and their protests pressured the company into revising it about a year after it launched in July 2005.
Yes, users hated it, so they expanded the program to cover other products. Thanks, MS!
...any Office Online templates downloaded from within the Office 2007 Microsoft Office System applications will require validation of legitimacy...
...users of Office Update will have to validate the legitimacy of their Office software before they can use the service...
The joke's on Microsoft. Exactly how many people use Online templates or Office Update? Compared to people who use Windows Update, I'm guessing not that many. And of those people who do use Office Update *and* don't have a legit copy of Office, how many of them are savvy enough to *ahem* figure out/find a way around the mandatory OGA?
Windows Update is being phased out and will be fully replaced with Microsoft Update, which will be expanded to provide updates for all Microsoft programs. Office updates will then become as routine as operating system ones.
Windows Update is being phased out and will be fully replaced with Microsoft Update, which will be expanded to provide updates for all Microsoft programs. Office updates will then become as routine as operating system ones.
If that's so, then all I have to say is it's about time. It was rare enough before that people got Office Updates (or even knew they existed). With Automatic Updates I'm sure it became even easier for people to forget that Office Updates needed checking as well.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday October 27 2006, @04:15PM (#16615546)
An anecdote sure, but the old slightly technical guy in my office (fits the stereotype to a T) downloaded OpenOffice after MS Office was disabled on his computer. He had already activated it and registered it, but still had to activate it again to use any of the programs. Not even just update it, to use it at all according to him.
Last week he was a big Microsoft fan, this week he's researching his options.
Seriously... The more companies make the old or cracked versions of their
products more useful than the latest-n'-greatest, the less right they have
to whine about illegal copying and decreased sales.
Whether we talk about DVDs or WGA or software that phones home, people
just want to use what they own (and spare me the BS about licensing-vs-owning).
Making that harder will eventually drive people to the competition,
up to and including piracy.
There are countless reason to upgrade from office 97
"XML support" - noncompliant XML support, you mean.
[anything]"powerpoint"[anything] - I do work on my PC, not create cute slideshows for management meetings.
"more rows in excel" - Because 65k per worksheet has held me back so often?
"outlook spam filtering" - N/A, I use a real email program - Elm.
"sharepoint integration" - Give me a Wiki any day.
"team editing" - The word "team" has no "I" in it. I like it that way.
"task panes" - I know the shortcut keys. Give me my screen back!
"ink support" - My pen has that too, and doesn't suck 150 watts.
"infopath" - I just googled four entirely incompatible description of what that does, and still have no clue.
"onenote" - See "ink".
All these people that say "no reasons to upgrade from office 97" are the same who
see no reason to upgrade from Win98 - either they've never tried anything better i.e.
the new versions, or have such simple needs that basically anything would satisfy them
(like MS works), that's why.
Agreed completely. I use Office XP at work, and have yet to do anything in it that
I can't do in Office 97. 10-year old versions of Word and Excel quite simply do
what they should, they do it well, and MS hadn't gone too far down the
path of bloatware at that point.
As for XP vs 98, I personally came from the NT side of the family, so consider XP quite
a lot better than 98 (even better than NT4, though I can't really say it has a whole lot
more than Win2k).
Have you even seen or tried Office 2007? Beta 2 is truly amazing.
I don't want my productivity suite to amaze me. I just want it to sit
there obediently doing nothing until I want it to work; Then I want it to do
its thing and go away, offering me as little "help" as possible. I don't
want it to offer to integrate my music collection with my writing style of the
moment. I don't want it to take me to a new paradigm of productive collaboration.
I don't want my core processes reengineered, I don't want animated help systems,
and I don't want my computer to phone any home but my own!
This is good for open source software, such as openoffice or any competitor of MS. Software piracy helps Microsoft. When people can get the industry leading software for free (illegal copy) they will never consider the alternatives.
You mean all those worthless Office Online Templates will be unavailable to users with non-validated copies (*cough* er...pirated) of Microsoft Office?
Oh my what a blow to the software piracy market . . .
I think that WGA and now OGA are the first step down the slippery slope towards subscription based software. Valve's Steam already requires activation of products over the Internet and automatically updates the software as well and it has been very successful in frustrating copyright infringers. If Word was patched automatically everytime a new bug was discovered like Steam then OGA all-in-all wouldn't be that bad. Why (W|O)GA causes uproar is that you may experience a denial-of-service on your own software. If you're a pirate then too bad - go get OpenOffice, once ODF emerges you won't care about Microsoft Office anyway. But if you're a business then the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." principle kicks in - and sheeple buy what everyone else is using which at the moment is Microsoft Office. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft Office is really nice and all but once Open Document Format get's added then there is no problem of lock-in anymore - you'll buy your last version of Word to export your information into ODF and never look back.
Come closer, little Microsoft Genuine Advantage. Don't worry, I won't hurt you.
You're just so cute!
I think I will call you, Mini-DRM, because you're unwanted, intrusive, and I keep tripping over you while trying to use my legitimately purchased WinVista PCs!
PC World is reporting that Microsoft's Notepad Genuine Advantage (NGA) program will require mandatory validation of Notepad.exe starting [insert happy date here]"
Jokes aside - but MS Office is a separate product. I may buy it and run it under wine. If OGA stops updates for wine users, MS may face some other (legal) problems.
-- Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap.
I use M$ office at the office and at home, however, I will not pay the inflated prices for the suite at home, this just will give me the incentive to use open office at home, which when I get used to it, will make it easy to switch over to at the office. M$ is just shooting themselves in the foot here. I cannot be the only one who will do this now. Thier software is not worth that pricetag.
I know that online office apps are nowhere near as functional as Office/OpenOffice/WordPerfect, but that doesn't matter much to me. I'm a teacher and just today switched all of my students to Google Docs (we all have Gmail accounts because the school system doesn't need to pay for the same service). We were using OpenOffice (because it's free and students could legally install it from the discs I provided), but Google Docs is easier, cheaper for us, and does what we need it to do.
Are there features missing? You bet there are. But with Firefox 2.0 we now have real-time spellchecking, and I imagine that the features are going to grow as we go. For now, it does nearly everything that we need to do and if we don't, we can just shift to OpenOffice for that task and then move back to Google Docs for the rest of it.
What I'm saying is that, for us, in our school, MS Office is unnecessary. We can't be the only ones.
Doesn't that signal a problem for a company that makes tremendous amounts of money on the product?
Let 2/3rds of the Office users on the planet be using pirated versions of office. If MS Office market share disappears overnight after they start mandating this, I'll never ask for anything ever again! And I mean it this time!
Could anything more plainly prove that if you want access to your OWN data, you'd better not use any proprietary tool to create/store it -- especially not Microsoft.
First they'll lock you out of the O/S; then they'll lock you out of the tools.
"Nice lot of data you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it..."
I might believe you if you didn't contradict yourself:
For the legit user, it's not a problem.
One real issue that vendors need to address is 24/7 availability of support staff so that legit users can get new license keys if a machine dies after hours or on the weekend.
The second sentence means that activation is a problem for legitimate users.
You are also making assumptions that are not necessarily valid, e.g. that all machines have internet access.
You are also looking at this in the context of single-
Just gets easier (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not to mention that Excel beats the turd out of Calc in its ability to parse text files - at least at first glance.
Maybe I'm a dumbass, but I couldn't figure out how to load a pipe delimited file into calc like I could do so in Excel.
Excel is still more intuitive and provides more power to working with larger lists too. There's no AFAIK pivot tables in Calc either.
Both really strong reasons for the enterpr
Who needs Open Office when you've got piracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sporadic
Re:Just gets easier (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What they are betting is that the number of users who get pissed off and quit using MS Office is going to be less than the number of people who pay for it instead of pirating it. And who knows, they might be right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've run the numbers myself, both estimates before the fact and 1-year, and 2-year follow-ups.
It's just simple. Everytime I looked at the numbers it was clearly a 8-to-1 or better ratio. That's 8 lost pirated users for ever lost paying customer.
In this case - I was a consultant on the project - when you consider that users on illegally copied versions of the software generated support requests at a much higher rate than legit users
Re:Just gets easier (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Just gets easier (Score:5, Insightful)
What? There is no manual for M$ Office, you say? At least not one worth the paper it's printed on?
Well then, we are indeed comparing apples to apples here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And will someone tell people to stop using tabs to format documents!
Re:Just gets easier (Score:5, Informative)
http://documentation.openoffice.org/manuals/OOo2.
At a svelt 587 pages, it is exactly 496 pages longer than the Office 2003 Manual, located here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/f/1/0f1d
I know size doesn't count for everything, but still; it's there, it's significantly better than the OEM MS Office manual, and it is accompanied by fantastic community support, including developer feedback.
Parent
I see a pattern here... (Score:2)
Aren't you supposed to do user interface research before releasing a product out to the consumers? Why have your customers hate the product tbefore redesigning it to meet their needs?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
- The right to do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want.
- Have the belief that you know what's best for the consumer - even when they tell you otherwise.
- That you may abuse the "uneducated" consumer whenever you wish, via a graphical user interface, or
Customer as criminal (Score:5, Interesting)
I want software piracy to stop, altogether, NOW! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I want software piracy to stop, altogether, NOW (Score:4, Insightful)
-matthew
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
who cares if most pirates never buy the product, microsoft shouldnt feel obligated to suppor
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's why the majority of people hate Genuine Advantage and it's predecessors.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now MS is demanding that everything be paid for. How much this is going to effect the market is unclear. Most MS software I have owned has either been paid for by my school or places that I work through th
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't get it. Why continue to do something after it's been proven ineffective?
Aero
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
"Stop crying. If you want to cry I'll give you something to cry about. Whack! There, how did you like that? Now stop crying."
There's really no accounting for the behavior of people. That's why, on the whole I prefer hanging out with cats.
KFG
Parent
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, WGA is easy to defeat. Thats not the point. There are douzans of thousands (dare I say hundreds of thousands?) of people who copy CDs and install them all over (even large corporations!) because they don't realise that its 1 license per user. Read that again: They don't realise it, they don't know it. Many -consulting firms- (thats geeks here!) buy 1 MSDN Universal subscriptions, and use them for 20 developers, thinking its what you're SUPPOSED to do. Same with Windows, same with Office, same with everything. These tools are ONLY meant to stop those people. No one else. Yes they will lose a few customers (a lot even) in the process. But they'll make it back up. You have no idea how many people I know purchased legit copies of Windows just because of the original WinXP's activation scheme, going "Wha? You mean if you own the CD its not enough to install it on my 8 computers? How come?", until they got explained how things work in the non-free world.
Parent
Sounds like a good reason to upgrade (Score:2)
That's Responsiveness! (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, users hated it, so they expanded the program to cover other products. Thanks, MS!
Office Update? What's that?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The joke's on Microsoft. Exactly how many people use Online templates or Office Update? Compared to people who use Windows Update, I'm guessing not that many. And of those people who do use Office Update *and* don't have a legit copy of Office, how many of them are savvy enough to *ahem* figure out/find a way around the mandatory OGA?
Re:Office Update? What's that?? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
If that's so, then all I have to say is it's about time. It was rare enough before that people got Office Updates (or even knew they existed). With Automatic Updates I'm sure it became even easier for people to forget that Office Updates needed checking as well.
Re:microsoft update = windows update + office upda (Score:3, Funny)
Well, at the very least with more deftly polished ignorance...
At least one person already switched (Score:3, Interesting)
Last week he was a big Microsoft fan, this week he's researching his options.
One more reason... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously... The more companies make the old or cracked versions of their products more useful than the latest-n'-greatest, the less right they have to whine about illegal copying and decreased sales.
Whether we talk about DVDs or WGA or software that phones home, people just want to use what they own (and spare me the BS about licensing-vs-owning). Making that harder will eventually drive people to the competition, up to and including piracy.
Re:One more reason... (Score:4, Interesting)
"XML support" - noncompliant XML support, you mean.
[anything]"powerpoint"[anything] - I do work on my PC, not create cute slideshows for management meetings.
"more rows in excel" - Because 65k per worksheet has held me back so often?
"outlook spam filtering" - N/A, I use a real email program - Elm.
"sharepoint integration" - Give me a Wiki any day.
"team editing" - The word "team" has no "I" in it. I like it that way.
"task panes" - I know the shortcut keys. Give me my screen back!
"ink support" - My pen has that too, and doesn't suck 150 watts.
"infopath" - I just googled four entirely incompatible description of what that does, and still have no clue.
"onenote" - See "ink".
All these people that say "no reasons to upgrade from office 97" are the same who see no reason to upgrade from Win98 - either they've never tried anything better i.e. the new versions, or have such simple needs that basically anything would satisfy them (like MS works), that's why.
Agreed completely. I use Office XP at work, and have yet to do anything in it that I can't do in Office 97. 10-year old versions of Word and Excel quite simply do what they should, they do it well, and MS hadn't gone too far down the path of bloatware at that point.
As for XP vs 98, I personally came from the NT side of the family, so consider XP quite a lot better than 98 (even better than NT4, though I can't really say it has a whole lot more than Win2k).
Have you even seen or tried Office 2007? Beta 2 is truly amazing.
I don't want my productivity suite to amaze me. I just want it to sit there obediently doing nothing until I want it to work; Then I want it to do its thing and go away, offering me as little "help" as possible. I don't want it to offer to integrate my music collection with my writing style of the moment. I don't want it to take me to a new paradigm of productive collaboration. I don't want my core processes reengineered, I don't want animated help systems, and I don't want my computer to phone any home but my own!
Parent
this is good (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh No! (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean all those worthless Office Online Templates will be unavailable to users with non-validated copies (*cough* er...pirated) of Microsoft Office?
Oh my what a blow to the software piracy market . . .
Subscriptions? (Score:3, Insightful)
I shall call you - Mini-DRM (Score:5, Funny)
You're just so cute!
I think I will call you, Mini-DRM, because you're unwanted, intrusive, and I keep tripping over you while trying to use my legitimately purchased WinVista PCs!
Up next... (Score:5, Funny)
PC World is reporting that Microsoft's Notepad Genuine Advantage (NGA) program will require mandatory validation of Notepad.exe starting [insert happy date here]"
Bravo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when using MS office was the path of least resistance?
-jcr
Time for refund (Score:2, Informative)
Jokes aside - but MS Office is a separate product. I may buy it and run it under wine. If OGA stops updates for wine users, MS may face some other (legal) problems.
--
Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap.
Home vs. Office (Score:2, Informative)
Google Docs et. al. (Score:3, Informative)
Are there features missing? You bet there are. But with Firefox 2.0 we now have real-time spellchecking, and I imagine that the features are going to grow as we go. For now, it does nearly everything that we need to do and if we don't, we can just shift to OpenOffice for that task and then move back to Google Docs for the rest of it.
What I'm saying is that, for us, in our school, MS Office is unnecessary. We can't be the only ones.
Doesn't that signal a problem for a company that makes tremendous amounts of money on the product?
Obligatory Ben Franklin Quote: (Score:2, Funny)
Or maybe MS likes pissing of it's customers...nah that can't be it!
Oh Please, God (Score:2)
Wake-up call! MS is between you & your data (Score:3, Insightful)
Could anything more plainly prove that if you want access to your OWN data, you'd better not use any proprietary tool to create/store it -- especially not Microsoft.
First they'll lock you out of the O/S; then they'll lock you out of the tools.
"Nice lot of data you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it..."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The second sentence means that activation is a problem for legitimate users.
You are also making assumptions that are not necessarily valid, e.g. that all machines have internet access.
You are also looking at this in the context of single-