Warning On Office 2007 "Try-Before-You-Buy" 380
walterbyrd writes with a warning: "Microsoft is pushing Office 2007 with 'try-before-you-buy.' Please don't let your friends and relatives install Microsoft 'trial' software. When Microsoft tells you 'try-before-you-buy,' the 'buy' part is not meant to be an option. Once you 'try' a Microsoft 'upgrade' you can not easily go back, because your files will be replaced by new versions that you need the new software to read." The ChannelRegister article also notes how Microsoft's push goes against the grain of the consumer revolt against "crapware." Read on for an account of walterbyrd's experience with a previous Microsoft trial upgrade.
I remember when my brother-in-law decided to try Office-2003. It was a complete mess. I didn't think I'd ever get it fixed. Here is the story:
Office-2003 installed over his Office-2000. His Outlook-2000 email was reformatted to the new-and-improved Outlook-2003. And Outlook-2003 format is incompatible with everything except Outlook-2003. So when his trial period was over, he could no longer access his email — unless he wanted to buy Office-2003.
Of course, I could not fully remove the "trial" version of Office-2003. Once Office-2003 has been installed, it can not overwritten with an earlier version of Office. Also, you cannot remove Office-2003 and re-install Office-2000, unless you know how to hack the registry. And you can not easily install Office-2000 and Office-2003 on the same PC.
What I eventually did to correct the situation:
- Signed up for my own trial version of Office-2003
- Used my trial version to import my brother-in-law's email file
- Saved my brother-in-law's email in another format
- Backed up his data
- Wiped his HDD
- Restored everything
In fairness, I have not used the trial version of Office-2007. But, after my experience with the trial version of Office-2003, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Please make sure your friends don't touch it either.
Don't "upgrade" without a motivation (Score:4, Interesting)
The same goes for rolling out Office 2007. I don't see a business case for it. I have known one business to start migrating over to Office 2007 because there is some collaboration tool they've just *got* to have. I think it's a mistake. But then again, this is a decision made by the same IT "MCSE" leadership that couldn't manage to get Exchange 2003 successfully installed and "lost" their Blackberry server CDs... (As if they couldn't download the software from RIM's site.)
If there is a business case for Office 2007 or for Vista, I'd be really happy to hear it. But for the moment, I see no functions or features that we need to get our work done or that could help us get it done any better.
don't buy it anway, its crapware (Score:1, Interesting)
Most people don't focus on the issues. (Score:1, Interesting)
The article linked in the Slashdot article mentions Microsoft's apparent motivation: "Previous editions of Office have shipped below target, with just 15 percent of PCs running Office 2003 two years after that suite shipped, instead of Microsoft's stated goal for two thirds of PCs to be running Office 2003 by 2005."
There are problems: "Anyone with custom macros... watch out [slashdot.org]"
This Slashdot comment is typical: "This entire "article" is FUD. [slashdot.org]
The issue is that people with insufficient technical knowledge who buy new computers may not find any option other than paying for another version of Microsoft Office. That is abusive. Microsoft provides big companies methods they may or may not know about, but apparently tries to dominate most users with sneaky methods.
At the time I am writing this, only this comment shows an understanding of the issue: Forced Upgrade [slashdot.org]: "Forced upgrades to new versions of MS Office is a normal experience in a large company."
Thare are several social issues here:
1) Slashdot comments often take the position, "If you don't know as much as I do, then I have no sympathy for you." It's macho posturing.
2) Slashdot comments often come from a quirky viewpoint: "I will try to find an interpretation of what you said that could possibly be wrong, ignore any interpretations that are correct, and pretend that there could be no correct interpretations."
3) People are often not able to protect themselves from abuse, especially when abusers exploit their weaknesses.
4) Not only are people often not able to protect themselves from abuse, a significant percentage of people are themselves abusers. The weaker abusers use the actions of the more powerful abusers as a shield.
5) Microsoft managers apparently feel they are unable to compete honestly. The apparently feel that, without tricks, they cannot compete. Apparently they don't know how to compete by making a good product, or for some reason they cannot make a good product. Possibly inside Microsoft making a good product is politically impossible.
6) Many people depend on the income from the problems Microsoft creates. Those who feel they have no other way of making a living often attack anything negative about Microsoft, apparently because they see negative information about Microsoft as potentially lowering their income, which is probably true.
open office (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:prompt? (Score:2, Interesting)
Because my brother-in-law waited until his trial period was over. At which time he could not access Outlook at all.
But, you are right: if my brother-in-law had saved to a different format before his trial period ended, he would have saved me a lot of work. What could I say? My mother's even worse.
Msoft actively patrols blogs to counter warnings (Score:4, Interesting)
mainly because it's not widely appreciated that it can be difficult to go back to the older file format.
To my astonishment, within a couple of hours Brian Jones, who is a program manager working on the Office XML functionality had posted a comment to the blog to point out the 27 Meg compatibility pack. http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/03/ 12/how-to-create-and-consume-openxml-formats.aspx [msdn.com]
Wow, this is a little law student website on the other side of the planet from Microsoft, and they have Office program managers patrolling cyberspace looking for any negative comments ?
Re:prompt? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah its pretty lame (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask Science about so-called "compatibility pack" (Score:5, Interesting)
1] http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/prep/docx
"Because of changes Microsoft has made in its recent Word release that are incompatible with our internal workflow, which was built around previous versions of the software, Science cannot at present accept any files in the new
"Users of Word 2007 should also be aware that equations created with the default equation editor included in Microsoft Word 2007 will be unacceptable in revision, even if the file is converted to a format compatible with earlier versions of Word; this is because conversion will render equations as graphics and prevent electronic printing of equations, and because the default equation editor packaged with Word 2007 -- for reasons that, quite frankly, utterly baffle us -- was not designed to be compatible with MathML."
[3]http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/04/math-marku
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/12608/1023/ [itwire.com.au]
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2
Nature's analysis of OOXML:
"We currently cannot accept files saved in Microsoft Office 2007 formats. Equations and special characters (for example, Greek letters) cannot be edited and are incompatible with Nature's own editing and typesetting programs"
[4] http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=519 [zdnet.com] "July 1: No more Office 2003 for OEMs" by Mary Jo Foley"
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/business_a
"Two important Microsoft topics--interoperability and Office file formats--intersect on the Mac desktop, and they brutally cross like swords.
Two weeks ago, Microsoft broke a promise made in December: The spring beta release of OOXML (Office Open XML) converters for Mac Office. "
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:4, Interesting)
Can you open an XHTML 1.0 web page designed now in an HTML 3.2 browser from 1997 (10 years ago)?
XHTML 1.0? If you're careful to follow the backward compatibility guidelines.
XHTML 1.1? Not if served properly.
XHTML 2 (whenever it comes out)? no.
Play Nice - Office is not an easy program (Score:3, Interesting)
My experience was this: I had a new PC with Office 2003 trial, and wanted to use my old version of Office to begin with. As such, I installed my earlier version of Office. The two programs would not coexist well at all. Office 2003 consistently annoyed me with unexpected attempts to start up.
As far as I could figure out, Office 2003 maps registry keys that earlier versions of Office 2000 do not. The result is that you can't effectively have Office 2003 and an earlier version of Office on the same PC, with the earlier version having preference. Every so often, the new version of Office would be started via one of the new registry keys, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I even refused to click Agree on th EULA, and Excel 2003 eventually decided to run anyway.
The solution was to uninstall both Office 2003 and the earlier version of Office, and then reinstall the desired version of Office. Currently, I just uninstall the trial versions of Office immediately, and do not allow them to run even once. This seems to work fairly well.
The original poster was essentially correct. If you do not know enough to uninstall all versions of Office, and then install the desired version, then you will have problems. If you try to "manually correct" things, you will probably wind up reinstalling Windows XP. Myself, I think if you want to have multiple versions of Office on the same PC, you probably want to install virtualization software like VMWware.
To this date, I still have not deliberately used Office 2003 or agreed to its EULA, and I haven't missed it either.
Re:M. Webster's Explains (Score:0, Interesting)
It sounds like M$ thinks people have forgotten, or enough new people have entered the industry that they can get away with doing this again. You will upgrade everyone, if you want to see/share your data again.
Smells like Microsoft. (Score:2, Interesting)
They'd install their free version of Office, produce multitudes of documents using the updated format (which was illegible by all previous versions of Office), and force the company to upgrade hundreds of other licenses just so they could read what their superiors were sending them.
This "die before you buy" technique doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Removing Trial Version (Score:2, Interesting)
I bought a new laptop and once home and through the setup process, I began to remove those applications I did not need. I need the Windows OS, but I use all other OpenSource Apps. There are two Office 2007 entries. One is for the Office 2007 Trial Activation and the other is for the 2007 Trial Student Edition. The Trial Activation program will not uninstall as there isn't a "version" of Office installed. I had already uninstalled the trial office, and the solution was to re-install the trial software and then remove the Activation App. I tried that, and even went so far as to download and install the trial standard edition -- the activation app would not uninstall at all.
Seems that Microsoft wants a reminder that you need Office 2007 and will not let you clean up the programs on "your" computer. It really is one step closer to not being "Where do you want to go today?" but "Here is where we will let you go..."