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Just say no; Britain refuses to adopt next generation of Microsoft products

In a rather controversial move, the British public school system announced a countrywide policy decision that it will not adopt Microsoft's Windows Vista or Office 2007 in its schools and offices. 

The move is the latest in a series of woes for the struggling Vista.  Despite sufficient sales, the operating system has failed to obtain high marks from many critics.  Its detractors included PC World after it featured the OS as its disappointment of the year. 

Analysts point to the numerous performance and security issues that have caused the OS to struggle to match the success of Windows XP, particularly in the face of Apple Inc.'s stylish OS X Leopard.  Despite being outsold considerably by Vista, Leopard managed to steal much of the media attention and glowing reviews.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, also known as Becta, governs the educational systems tech adoption.  Becta's decision effectively bans adoption of Office '07 and Vista on any existing machines.  Government employees can buy new machines with the software, but the agency strongly recommends against it; suggesting instead to buy Linux products, such as the OpenOffice.org desktop package.

The reasoning behind Becta's decision specifically cited that the new OS and office suite provides little in the way of improvement, while bringing to the table a broad array of potential problems.  In the report Stephen Lucy, Becta's executive director of strategic technologies, explains, "Our advice is to be sure there is a strong business case for upgrading to these products as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear."

The report also blasted Microsoft for refusing to support the Open Document Format (ODF), championed by International Organization for Standardization.  Microsoft instead chose to adopt another open format known as Office Open XML.  The report states, "Microsoft should provide native support for the ODF file format increasingly used in competitor products and those that are free to use."

The move follows suit with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) decision ban Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7 due to similar concerns.

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Really??
By Spivonious on 1/15/2008 3:44:56 PM , Rating: 5
I can see not recommending Vista, since it does have it's share of first version woes, but Office? I haven't used it since the public beta but it ran fine and I loved the new interface. It made things much easier to find.




RE: Really??
By JackBeQuick on 1/15/2008 3:46:30 PM , Rating: 5
My sentiment exactly. PowerPoint 2007 and Excel 2007 are fantastic. Word 2007 is pretty marginal in new features, but there's some neat stuff here and there.


RE: Really??
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 1/15/2008 3:48:32 PM , Rating: 5
Yeah, PowerPoint 2007 is pretty much like comparing a Model T to a new Bently. It's totally a great app, and nobody can say anything to change my mind about that :)


RE: Really??
By Souka on 1/15/2008 5:07:45 PM , Rating: 2
The better pivot tables, and more cell count support in Excel2007 is awesome...great for my work.

And of course, Office2007 is growing in support...real bad idea to teach the "future" an old software app...real bad idea.


RE: Really??
By themadmilkman on 1/15/2008 11:53:53 PM , Rating: 2
Since it will still be the standard when they enter the workplace, amirite?


RE: Really??
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/16/2008 8:24:08 AM , Rating: 3
Most comapnies will move for rapid adoption of Office 2007, and Vista will come along in time. The tangible benefits professionally for Office 2007 is quite high, with Excel and Power Point being light years ahead of previous versions. Tangible benefits of Vista are reduced support costs, but the cost to procure currently outweighs in the short term, the cost savings in support. This makes adoption of Vista slow. It will be phased in during hardware refreshes, this is typical at most companies.


RE: Really??
By qwertyz on 1/16/08, Rating: 0
RE: Really??
By eye smite on 1/15/08, Rating: 0
RE: Really??
By mikeyD95125 on 1/15/2008 10:30:49 PM , Rating: 1
I don't know which software your referring to (Vista or Office) but it sounds like you have not used Office and are just bashing MS. You should try it out. It is a worthy upgrade over office 2003 or others. And it is much faster than open office.


RE: Really??
By eye smite on 1/16/08, Rating: 0
RE: Really??
By mindless1 on 1/16/2008 9:43:28 AM , Rating: 2
People should try something they don't need? I hate to break it to you but many companies get along fine with Office 2000. They may have a few newer office boxes just to read the odd incompatible files but then again that's one of the reasons cited in the article for shunning O2K7.

It seems hard for some to understand but basically your subjective needs are not objective needs. As much as you may feel O2K7 is important, the basis is not necessarily applicable to others else they would have switched too. We don't live in a vacuum, are aware O2K7 exists and would switch if the need was there.


RE: Really??
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/15/2008 3:48:47 PM , Rating: 5
Yeah, I actually like Office 2007's interface and it it's a great upgrade.

Vista, however, I can do without. It's not that Vista is bad, it's just that XP gets the job done.


RE: Really??
By FITCamaro on 1/15/2008 4:06:00 PM , Rating: 5
For a corporate environment, yes, Vista doesn't offer much.

For home users it, to me, offers a lot of advantages. Better security, better user account implementation, DX10, and several other improvements. Sure it uses a little more memory than XP. But you can get 4GB of RAM for under $100. So to me its not an issue.


RE: Really??
By djcameron on 1/15/2008 4:12:21 PM , Rating: 2
I love the new interface in Office 2007. I'm still running Vista on my desktop PC, but there are many things that irritate me. If SP1 doesn't fix the issues, then I will return to XP.


RE: Really??
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 3:21:04 PM , Rating: 1
What things irritate you? Many things that people have basically whined about in Vista, they are just things changing and then not liking that.

The only ding I personally had on Vista was that I had Office 2007 get corrupted somehow and it would not re-install, but I was looking through my registry and found the problem there.

There were these WEIRD ass entries under Local Machine in the registry, with all sorts of invalid characters. Once I deleted them..... WOW! I got all my functionality back and Office 2007 would re-install once again.

I really think that I got hit with a virus somehow (don't know how, since I am paranoid about my stuff) but I think I got rid of the virus.


RE: Really??
By goku on 2/12/2008 3:45:48 PM , Rating: 2
I thought microsoft was trying to move away from using the registry and that was a big feature of vista... Sounds like they're all talk and no show. After dealing with the mess that is the registry, I'd much prefer to use INF files once again, at least those can be easily changed/repaired.


RE: Really??
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/15/2008 4:13:31 PM , Rating: 2
Even at home, it's not much of an improvement.

I have a desktop PC with Windows Vista Home Premium and an Eee PC with Windows XP Home. Both get the job done.

I don't game on my PC, so I don't give a crap about DX10. Better security and better user account implementations? I'm the only one that uses my PC and I have it behind a firewall and use anti-virus and anti-spyware protection -- just as I do with Windows XP.

Upgrading to Vista was a waste for me. The only good thing was that I got a ton of freebies during the Vista launch with I then unloaded on eBay to bring down the initial cost of entry for Vista.

Now I'm not saying the Vista won't be an improvement for some people, but then again, using XP instead of upgrading to Vista isn't going to hurt most home users at all.


RE: Really??
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 4:24:32 PM , Rating: 3
I disagree. The new multimedia features in Vista make it a no-brainer for home users. Such as built-in DVD player, DVD authoring, better management of photos and other media, etc. These are features that average home users will appreciate in Vista that don't exist in XP.

In addition, the other strong point in Vista is its built-in "self-healing" capabilities in some areas, its ability to self-diagnose and correct some kinds of problems. This is great for home users who may not be highly-skilled PC techs.

By your criteria, any OS can "get the job done," and there would be no point in further development in the OS field. But the reality is that new features and improvements are made in each version that make the user experience better in an evolutionary way. The problem with some folks is that they expect a revolutionary OS upgrade, which quite frankly isn't going to happen because of the maturity of the field.


RE: Really??
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/15/2008 4:29:36 PM , Rating: 2
That's if home users even take advantage of those features or even know that they're are there.

Most people I know (friends/family) just install whatever crap comes with their digital camera/camcorder instead of using the stuff that's built into Windows.

And just about every new computer sold today comes with some DVD player installed like PowerDVD or WinDVD (or whatever they call it these days).

I'd really like to know how many people are using the built-in utilities vs. third-party applications.


RE: Really??
By kmmatney on 1/15/2008 4:51:37 PM , Rating: 2
Built-in backup feature is nice. My problem is that I would have to get the Ultimate edition to get all the features I would like, and I don't feel like paying that much. In general, Windows XP has been great.


RE: Really??
By kmmatney on 1/15/2008 4:53:21 PM , Rating: 2
My problem with Office is it's cost. It may be a nice app, but it just costs to much, in my opinion.


RE: Really??
By RedStar on 1/15/2008 5:06:29 PM , Rating: 2
its 4 apps + a few puff pieces integrated. Well worth the cost when viewed as it should be.

The whole reason Wordperfect and Lotus failed ...lack of integration.


RE: Really??
By MonkeyPaw on 1/15/2008 5:47:45 PM , Rating: 3
Not to mention that it's productivity software. If the improvements in Office 2007 make you tangibly more efficient, then it will basically pay for itself through either saved wages or saved opportunity time. Considering just how powerful the Office suit is, the price isn't really that bad. Most people don't use any of the Office apps to their fullest. Every once in a while I learn something new in Excel that I didn't know it could do, and I make some fairly advanced spreadsheets already.


RE: Really??
By ImSpartacus on 1/15/2008 9:13:43 PM , Rating: 2
I disagree. While its a really nice suite (I use pro and love it), it is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

If you had to get a new copy of Office for any reason, you would likely get 2007, but I don't see too many people paying the hundreds of dollars for an upgrade. It's just not worth it.

If anything, so far the new ribbon has confused everyone I've seen use it (I have pretty exceptional all-around navigation skills and it took about a week to learn the basics for almost all the stuff I use).


RE: Really??
By The Sword 88 on 1/16/2008 4:19:12 PM , Rating: 2
The ne wPower Point and excel are vast improvement, sure they were not revolutions but they really make it easier and quicker to make good spreadsheets adn powerpoints quickly.


RE: Really??
By Snuffalufagus on 1/15/2008 6:08:14 PM , Rating: 2
It seems like it must be a preference of the 'local semi to very tech savy helper to all their friends and family' type situation. My personal opinion seems to be very different from yours. I despise any of the third party apps that people tend to install that have equivalents already in the OS and strongly recommend against using them (to the point of uninstalling them for others). A few examples of this are the crappy PPOE clients that SBC Yahoo, Earthlink, Viacom, etc... try to coerce their users into using, and suddenly they got ten other POS apps they never need, a POS toolbar and numerous apps launching at startup that they never use. The fricken photo management software is also a pain, especially if they have two or more cameras, suddenly they have an HP photo manager, Canon, etc.. bleck, and they wonder why their systems become unstable after a time. DVD players, I'd never actually spend cash on one of those, and being that I prefer to do a clean install of an OS from a FPP CD/DVD, no matter where the hardware comes from, I'm very happy to see the playback and editing capability in Vista. And the media center capacity, especially with a 360 is just sweet, very painless and simple for anyone to use once the autodetection kicks in. Fianlly, the remote assistance changes in Vista are much beter than in XP.

Again, this is just a different perspective and my opinion, but the fewer third apps that get installed the better for the user, the guy who has to help fix conflicts and crashes, and the systems overall stability.


RE: Really??
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 6:17:04 PM , Rating: 1
I agree completely. As someone who is called on to support the PCs of friends and family (with the usual 100% discount), all those add-in apps are the source of numerous very complex compatibility issues.

And the benefit that I see with Vista is that it has more of the essentials built in, requiring the machine to be more "lean and mean."

Most importantly, the stuff built into Vista has been well tested for compability, which is more than I can say for most third-party utilities.

I loaded Vista on my parents' machine over a year ago, and I have yet to receive a "technical support" phone call from them, which is nice. They can do all their stuff on the computer without having to ask me for help like they did pre-Vista.


RE: Really??
By Canizorro on 1/15/2008 7:09:25 PM , Rating: 2
My experience with Vista has been good for me, but not so good with my family and friends. Being the computer tech for my family and friends, I have been called on more Vista problems than I have with XP. It's usually an issue that I have to search for a hotfix for. Why some of these fixes aren't included in the automatic windows update feature, I do not know.

But since they released the SP1 RC, it seems to have included these updates that were available more than six months ago. So I have installed this SP1 on all of their PCs in hopes of minimizing the problems and keep them from switching back to XP. I think Vista is a nice OS, but it just needs..... more to make it a no brainer to upgrade from XP.

The built in apps are nice, but they aren't powerful enough (Photo gallery, anti virus, anti spyware, dvd player, defragger, internet explorer, zip compression, etc) for the majority of my family and friends to choose over a third party application. Make the built in apps rival the thrid party apps and I think you will have more XP users thinking they could have all those third party apps built in instead of checking to see if their third party app is compatible with Vista.


RE: Really??
By bobsmith1492 on 1/16/2008 11:46:27 AM , Rating: 2
They can't do that, though, or the EU will send in the troops to raid their headquarters for source code.


RE: Really??
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 3:26:22 PM , Rating: 1
You hit on the exact reason why they will not do what he suggested: if they were to make things that rivaled the separate software, the EU would get on their cases and say that they were trying to 'monopolize'.


RE: Really??
By Canizorro on 1/17/2008 10:07:54 PM , Rating: 2
Ahh yes, I didn't even think about it that way. So I shall revise my statement. Strip out all the built ins and just give us a nice lean OS to use. Then upgrade all those built in apps to rival third party apps and sell them retail at a low price. Or maybe keep the built in apps as they are and charge a fee to upgrade to a more powerful version that would be comparable to third party apps.


RE: Really??
By Proteusza on 1/16/2008 5:15:49 AM , Rating: 2
vista still isnt quite right though.

last night, Vista told me it had an update to install. I clicked install, but it failed. So I tried again, and yet again it failed. So after some internet browsing, I shut my PC down, telling it to install the updates as it shuts down.

This morning, I boot up, and my PC hangs. I removed any USB devices, uninstalled my most recently installed apps (had to go to safemode for that), nothing.

In frustration I did a system restore to a point just prior to the update. Guess what, it worked fine. It just signifies that the patch wasnt tested enough - I'll bet most people didnt have any problems with it. Not acceptable if you ask me - how many people would have known what Safe Mode and System Restore even are, let alone how to use them.

The problem with Vista is that it was rushed - it should have been released about June last year. Maybe even January 2008. Had they taken their time, they could have included some of the features from SP1 in Vista before its release - such as the ability to copy files like XP can, and the ability to network properly.


RE: Really??
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 4:14:07 PM , Rating: 1
Ability to network properly? Excuse me, but I have not had one problem with networking on Vista, except that it didn't want to 'play nice' with my parent's Windows XP Media Center computer that the printer we use is connected to, the main reason why I upgraded their computer to Vista and then that problem went away.

As for the update problem.... I have never had an update yet in Vista make my computer hang, and I have had quite a few updates fail thus far because I have already installed them on my computer manually.

Your 'system restore' thing also assumes that the problem has gone away that made your computer hang.... I'm betting that in a couple of days, it will hang again, and will become apparent that it is a virus or spyware problem.

Also, most people know what Safe Mode and System Restore are... I instructed my cousins on what it was when they bought their computers and they know what those who things are and how to use them.

As to the ability to copy files like XP thing..... SIGH! There has been an update, and a AUTOMATIC UPDATE, for that since about June of this year. So that isn't really a problem for the vast majority of people anymore.


RE: Really??
By Zelvek on 1/17/2008 1:08:24 AM , Rating: 2
Well the very process you went through indicates a lack of basic troubleshooting skills. If an update was having issues installing and when you come back your pc is not booting why would you assume that it must be a recently installed app? Even if one of your apps was causing an issue with the update the fact that the update was having problems installing would mean that you would have to remove the update anyway.

XP updates fail all the time. Every Wednesdays to Friday after update Tuesdays my shop gets at least 4 machines with update problems. If you consider the massive number of possible hardware and software configerations a windows machine can have you would realize that there are bound to be occasional problems.

Vista has been one of if not the most reliable of windows releases Microsoft has ever done. The problems with it are far fewer than with previous OS's around this time in their life. No I'm not talking about compatibility or drivers issues these are ether not in Microsoft's hand or unavoidable if you want progress.

I assume the copy issue you are talking about is the one that only occurs if you are copying over a network and running Kaspersky. This issue was hardly Microsoft's fault alone and yet they have to take all the blame. So far I have had an easier time setting up networks in vista than XP. I probably do two to three home networks a month for work.

You can't fairly judge an operating system off your limited experience (thats not an insult) the few computers you mentioned are a very small test pool.


RE: Really??
By carl0ski on 1/15/2008 5:13:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Sure it uses a little more memory than XP. But you can get 4GB of RAM for under $100. So to me its not an issue.


My main gripe with the discontent of microsoft is their babble of conserving energy through super advanced power management features.

These are negated by the need of extra sticks of ram

4X !GB sticks 4GB of RAM uses 4 - 6X the power of the 1 Stick 512MB needed in Windows XP.


RE: Really??
By TomZ on 1/15/08, Rating: 0
RE: Really??
By carl0ski on 1/15/2008 5:43:59 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
In addition, the RAM power consumption is a very small percentage of the total. It is totally dwarfed by the power consumption of the CPU, chipset, and video card.


nice of you mention that Microsoft also encourages and heavily promotes the use of more powerful and power hungry Video Cards , Chipsets and CPU.

It's all just do frivilous.

If my Laptop 512MB ram 1Ghz P3 Mobile onboard intel 830 video uses a 20W power supply and cannot run vista then we are going backwards.

My CoreDuo 1.66ghz 1GB Ram
and
HP TX1001 Turion X2 2Ghz 1GB Ram
both cannot run their bundled Windows Vista Business smoothly using their 50 and 80Watt power demands.
Then i deem Vista more Power Hungry and a failure at power efficiency


RE: Really??
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 5:58:48 PM , Rating: 1
Your 512MB laptop doesn't run Vista well because of the lack of RAM, not because of lack of power. Vista doesn't run well on slower processors with that much RAM.

I've got a few other machines here that are slower and older than the other two machines that you mention. They have 1GB of RAM, are single-cores, and two use old Intel integrated graphics and the other runs an old, cheap video card. These machines run Vista just fine - smoothly without any problems. One is used for electronic CAD, one for office work, and another mainly for Internet and running some older games.

So I find your claims a bit hard to believe. Ship the machines here and I'll figure out what's wrong, because there must be something set up incorrectly.


RE: Really??
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 3:30:59 PM , Rating: 1
That is what the usual problem is. Personally, I installed Vista on my parent's 3 year old Pentium 4 based Media Center PC from HP, and it is FASTER with Vista on it than with XP on it.

I honestly don't know why that is, but the network speeds have gone up 20 times when downloading stuff off the internet (1.2Mb speeds for some downloads) and 5 times when transferring files between my computers.
Add to that, that 3D gaming is faster on Vista than XP with the games that I play (confirmed by framerates in the same parts of the games) and that I can play with higher settings in Vista and still get good framerates...... and Vista is a no-brainer.

There is one thing I have to say about Vista: ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST 2 GB OF MEMORY FOR VISTA! Otherwise your computer will run slow as anything, slower than a turtle caught in the La-Brea tar pits.


RE: Really??
By killerb255 on 1/16/2008 4:29:36 PM , Rating: 2
I think Vista begins to shine over XP once you cross into the 64-bit realm (4 GB+ of RAM).

...that and driver support for Vista x64 seems to be better than XP x64...at least for the hardware I've been using.

If you want Media Center and more than 4 GB of RAM, it's Vista or bust. There is no XP Media Center Edition x64.

Pros and Cons of Vista (which may or may not apply to you):

Pros:

+: growing 64-bit support
+: .wim image backups
+: near instantaneous searches, even over ginormous hard drives.
+: adding mass storage drivers during installation can be done with other things aside from a damn floppy (or slipstreaming)
+: OS deployment is much easier--the HAL is not as big of an issue when it comes to deploying images to different hardware.
+: Navigating multiple folders deep within a hierarchy is much easier (just click the name of the folder you want to go back to in the address bar instead of using shortcuts, manually typing the path, clicking "Up one level" a few billion times, or clicking the "Back" button a few billion times
+: Self-healing for the mother****ing win!
+: WinPE 2.0 for the mother****ing win!

Cons:
-: Beefy hardware requirements (installing on machine with less than 2 GB of RAM = masochism)
-: Many games tend to be slower on Vista than XP
-: Dropped support for NetMeeting, HyperTerminal
-: Odd bugs that pop up, like Windows Updates that periodically fail on some PCs
-: EXTREMELY slow at copying files at times. Most of the time, it's much faster to use the command prompt and either XCOPY or ROBOCOPY.
-: Most of the Pros I listed are more like luxuries rather than absolute necessities. Going from 98 to XP was like going from black and white TV to color TV. XP to Vista is like going from color TV to HDTV.
-: Vista's predecessor was successful and is the biggest obstacle in making it a no-brainer upgrade. XP had predecessors from two different Windows kernels--although XP's improvements over 2000 were marginal at the time, its improvements from 9x were pretty much night and day.


RE: Really??
By anotherdude on 1/15/2008 9:09:57 PM , Rating: 2
But all this new hardware will soon be cheap as the old stuff! And that's a fact. This is how the machine advances and why we are not still using Dos 5, thanks to the whole process ever advancing.

These arguments have applied to every new OS. XP was hated at first. Gamers swearing they would never switch unless you pried 98 SE, God's own OS, from their cold dead hands and so forth. Now XP is God's OS, LOL

Sadly Vista doesn't really wow you with must have features. I have it and I'm glad I do. 6 gig ram helps. If I ran a corporation or a school system I'd be hanging back awhile too though. Not because Vista is bad, it's just not worth the expense and the trauma.


RE: Really??
By piroroadkill on 1/15/2008 11:24:53 PM , Rating: 1
I don't know why everyone says this about 98, it really wasn't that great at all.

I remember getting XP two weeks before it was released (piracy, hurr) and I never went back, nor did I want to go back, to 98.

I've used Vista though, and hell, my job often involves teaching people about all the new features in Vista - but I'm really not convinced there's a major benefit for me.

The main problem is the graphics driver support, seeing as I run a clusterfuck of cards in my PC to power 4 displays.


RE: Really??
By tomal on 1/16/2008 8:09:16 AM , Rating: 2
yeah bro you are 100% right.

I can still remember people complaining about xp's hard disk space requirements (roughly 1.5 GB) where 98 used to take around 200 to 300 MB. People sweared like they will never ever upgrade to XP.


RE: Really??
By MaK2000 on 1/16/2008 11:33:48 AM , Rating: 2
I remember getting a copy of XP from a friend in the Marines while they were testing XP for implementation at Pendelton before its launch and I installed it for two weeks then went back to 2000. I didn't go to XP until close to SP1. It is the same thing with Vista but Vista had its problems smoothed out much faster. I got Vista Ult 64 at launch and dual booted with XP Pro till July. I never had any problems with it so finally I bought another 2 gigs of memory and Vista 64 with 4 gigs is outstanding. I think Microsoft put out a great product.


RE: Really??
By tomal on 1/16/2008 8:07:28 AM , Rating: 2
bro during 1998 pc games used to take not more than 100 MB of hard drive space and they came in 1 disc cds. Now you need around 8 GB of hard drive space to install games and they usually come in 2 DVDs. So you cant say games in 1998 were more efficient than the games of 2007/8.

Regarding power efficiency, even Windows XP had this problem when it first arrived in laptops. You can google for it.


RE: Really??
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 3:34:41 PM , Rating: 1
Add to that the fact that those games back then had TERRIBLE graphics compared to the games today, and were mainly 2D games as well.

3D is always going to suck more power than 2D, anyone with a brain knows that and accepts that. Add to that, the fact that games are getting bigger because they are including more things: better graphics, better everything basically - and you realize why games suck up more power today and look more 'inefficient'.


RE: Really??
By ImSpartacus on 1/15/2008 9:06:00 PM , Rating: 2
That's not true. Ram is flash memory (or something comparable).

Ever read up on SSD power consumption? It's a fraction of hard drive consumption. And hard drives aren't even remarkable power consumers!

Graphics Cards, and CPU's are probably the two largest power consumers in any given computer. Powering down CPU's during idle time (not to mention hybrid SLI for GPU's) is a decently large power saver.


RE: Really??
By Griswold on 1/15/2008 5:26:37 PM , Rating: 2
Just like the office 2003 or even OpenOffice gets the job done.


RE: Really??
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/15/2008 5:38:28 PM , Rating: 2
I use OpenOffice on my notebook (due to space constraints), and Office 2007 on my desktop. The only reason why I use Office 2007 is again because of the launch deals.

However, Office 2007 has proved its worth to me moreso than Vista to me.

Again, just my personal opinion/experiences.


RE: Really??
By Frallan on 1/16/2008 4:43:13 AM , Rating: 2
Ive been using Office 2007 for a while and I still hate the new interface. At home office 2007 and at the office 2003 and 2003 is way easier to use for me still. But then again Id love a good console and some real wysiwyg commands as well such as kill -9...


RE: Really??
By CheesePoofs on 1/15/2008 4:51:41 PM , Rating: 2
Being in school myself, I can assure you Office 2007 causes way more problems than it solves. Everyone who has it tries to save files as docx's, which are then unreadable by all of us who don't have it and people with mac's. In addition, a feature of Excel I needed to use for an engineering class (the solver) caused excel to crash on every university-owned computer.

Personally, I find the interface annoying, and I know it confuses all the computer-illiterate people. Just not worth it, especially considering OpenOffice is free.


RE: Really??
By noirsoft on 1/15/2008 4:57:31 PM , Rating: 2
Office 2003 has the ability to read .docx with a patch, or so I've been told by my 2003-using manager who has successfully read the .docx files I've sent.


RE: Really??
By carl0ski on 1/15/2008 5:36:56 PM , Rating: 2
I deployed The
Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word ...
For office 2003 and office XP
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=htt...

Only issues i get complaints that their Powerpoint presentation doesnt come out the same

and a rare complaint of Excel files not converting correctly

Im not accepting responsibility though


RE: Really??
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 5:53:11 PM , Rating: 1
Of course it doesn't come out the same in every case. The 2007 file formats add features and functionality compared to the 2003 file formats. In other words, things that cannot be expressed in the 2003 formats.

Same goes for ODF (you complained about that in another pos), which is roughly a subset of the Office file formats. Therefore, converting to ODF, you're going to lose some details.

So I think your complaints are a bit uninformed.


RE: Really??
By Possessed Freak on 1/15/2008 5:51:26 PM , Rating: 2
Just yesterday, our campus chancellor made the statement that the IT department (me) *will* put Office 2007 on all campus machines. I am very happy this came on the first day of classes instead of the downtime between semesters.


RE: Really??
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/15/2008 8:41:04 PM , Rating: 4
Heres an idea, hit "Save As" and select DOC 97-2003 Format. Holy friggin miracle, we can save in OLDER formats and it will tell us if there will be anything lost in translation...... This has been around since Office 97, the fact that your having problems now with a basic feature that has existed probably the entire time you knew what a word processor was astounds me. Just wow.


RE: Really??
By glitchc on 1/15/2008 9:52:23 PM , Rating: 2
All it ever tells you, till 2003 at least, is that *some* formatting will be lost. It never tells you what exactly. It becomes a gamble to see if endnotes don't work, or perhaps those table margins are going to be the issue. Mind you I haven't used Office 2k7, but since you state Office 97 as a "since when" example, I suspect that nothing has changed in this regard.

How useful is a compiler statement "Your code has a few errors" without the minimum specification of no. of errors and the lines where they occur? Such type of error message/warning might as well not be there for all the good it does. If Office 2007 cannot tell me which formatting options cannot be saved, then it is a waste of time upgrading and expecting it to play nice with older docs.


RE: Really??
By piroroadkill on 1/15/2008 11:26:47 PM , Rating: 2
No, this is bullshit.

You can permanantly change the backwards compatibility in the Office 2007 options, which is one of the first things I did after installing it; so it's 97-2003 compatible.

Set and forget.


RE: Really??
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 1/16/2008 8:11:14 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
You can permanantly change the backwards compatibility in the Office 2007 options, which is one of the first things I did after installing it; so it's 97-2003 compatible.

This is entirely correct. If your that concerned with the older formatting, it will permanently force you into functions and features only usable for that particular format. Frankly, I prefer the new '07 format, and I just do a save-as whenever some clown wants it in an older format. I just open it up (it opens in compatablity mode for the doc type) and look at it visually. If everything looks good, away it gets sent.


RE: Really??
By tomal on 1/16/2008 8:02:10 AM , Rating: 3
why dont u change the default file save format in the options panel. In that way Office 2007 will always save in 97-2003 doc format.

By the way Office 2007 is great. It is selling in big numbers.


RE: Really??
By carl0ski on 1/15/2008 5:26:29 PM , Rating: 2
I doubt this decision has nothing anything to do with the Office 2007 Interface .

It is all to do with the lack of ODF file support in 2007 and poor its poor default compatibility with previous office versions

The same has occurred at my employer, we encourage the use of ODF
Office XP and 2003 support ODF through the stable Sun ODF filters for Office.
These filters DO NOT work with office 2007.

Further more OpenOffice can not open the default format in Office 2007 format
and even Office XP 2003 cannot open OOXML using MS own plugin with out losing some features/transitions.

At the end of the day these are an education entity and home users should not be forced to purchase Academic versions of Office 2007 for $150
$150 is a lot of money to most parents. This doesnt include to cost to upgrade their computer to Windows if the child for example owns a PC donated by charity, or a simple affordable BY such as EEePC

A number of charities in Australia for example recycle computers and sell them for cheap or donate them bundled with Ubuntu or Debian + OpenOffice.
These are the children generally attend public schools and cannot afford Office 2007
They should NOT be disadvantaged.


RE: Really??
By djcameron on 1/15/2008 7:02:06 PM , Rating: 2
$150 is a lot of money to most parents.

You have got to be kidding. That's practically the price of a text book, these days. $150, for something they'll use for all four years of college, is cheap.


RE: Really??
By The0ne on 1/16/2008 9:12:28 AM , Rating: 2
No he's not. $150 is a lot of money for some families, more so on families with multiple kids in school. Consider families that are on welfare that have kids doing well but not enough for scholarships and such. It's a lot of money. You're just not looking far down the class enough. Oh and I know this personally with my parents being in the same situation.


RE: Really??
By Zelvek on 1/17/2008 1:30:49 AM , Rating: 2
If you even have to pay that. Most schools can get even cheaper student editions. When I went to university we got student licensed editions of every office 2003 application windows xp pro and visual studio for free all we had to pay was shipping.


RE: Really??
By Zelvek on 1/17/2008 1:27:00 AM , Rating: 2
then just save in another format like .rtf which is supported by everything.


RE: Really??
By Screwballl on 1/15/2008 9:30:55 PM , Rating: 2
After running MSO2007 since beta (and then the full version), I have gone back to Thunderbird for email. I have a standard SMTP server (smtp.east.cox.net) yet MSO 07 refuses to send email through it no matter what settings I choose.
I keep it for archiving and a few office tasks but overall all of my email is done through Thunderbird.


RE: Really??
By gus6464 on 1/16/2008 6:02:19 PM , Rating: 2
I upgraded to Office 2007 right when it came out and I haven't looked back. While Word 2007 doesn't add much to 2003, Excel is just fantastic. It now takes me half the time to do all the tables that my professors want. I am still using XP but I will never see myself going back to Office 2003.


RE: Really??
By stmok on 1/17/2008 5:33:04 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
I can see not recommending Vista, since it does have it's share of first version woes, but Office? I haven't used it since the public beta but it ran fine and I loved the new interface. It made things much easier to find.


Its not the application, its the document format. Namely, OOXML. READ the report, and you'll understand what's going on.


Read the article people
By Denigrate on 1/15/2008 3:58:47 PM , Rating: 2
The only thing this article really says is that BECTA says schools can't "upgrade" existing systems to Vista/Office 2007. It clearly says that new systems are not included in the ban. However, Mick nicely spun the story to be doom and gloom for Microsoft.

Fanboi's suck.




RE: Read the article people
By DarkElfa on 1/15/2008 4:09:52 PM , Rating: 3
What I find absurd is the the majority of the people complaining and insulting Vista have never owned or even operated Vista. I've owned every single version of Windows since 3.1 and Vista is by far my favorite version. I couldn't even imagine going back to XP after a year of Vista, hell, I tried doing some work on a friend's PC that used XP and I could barely remember how to find stuff in it anymore. Sure, I had problems with Vista when I first got it, but there were far less than I had with XP when it came out.

How soon we forget and how quick we are to judge, sad.


RE: Read the article people
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 4:18:57 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, after using Vista, XP sucks. People who say that XP is great or "good enough" for the most part haven't used Vista.


RE: Read the article people
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 1/15/2008 4:24:40 PM , Rating: 2
I've used Vista ever since it was in beta. I'm a Vista beta tester in fact. I was an XP beta tester before that.

I've used both extensively. I prefer XP and there's nothing that anyone can do to change my mind.

There's nothing that I "personally" do on my desktop (Vista Home Premium SP1 RC Refresh) that I can't do on my Eee PC (XP Home SP2) other than things that are a limitation of the hardware itself (i.e. processor speed, storage space) -- it's not a function of the operating system at all.


RE: Read the article people
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 4:35:58 PM , Rating: 2
You're entitled to your opinion of course, but the fact remains that Vista has a lot of useful built-in features that XP lacks. So for many people that will be a selling point. Maybe not for you, however.

FYI, I also beta tested both operating systems, as well as a couple of Win9x ones before that.


RE: Read the article people
By kmmatney on 1/15/2008 4:56:16 PM , Rating: 2
I've used Vista at work (have to test all my software on it - major pain.) Its not bad, but it is a bit slow. Also, there are good freeware apps for most of the included features. If I was buying a new PC I'd probably get it, but I don't see any reason to upgrade (especially to pay a lot of money to upgrade).


RE: Read the article people
By RedStar on 1/15/2008 5:04:27 PM , Rating: 2
same arguement for XP vs 2000 ...xp added nothing and so i stuck with win2k pro.

So Vista has been a great upgrade --despite alot of early driver headaches.

*waves vista 64 flag*


RE: Read the article people
By noirsoft on 1/15/2008 4:58:42 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
there's nothing that anyone can do to change my mind.


That says a lot about you and little about the quality Vista


RE: Read the article people
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 5:14:54 PM , Rating: 2
We have a related saying here at work... "don't confuse me with the facts."


RE: Read the article people
By jtesoro on 1/16/2008 12:26:34 AM , Rating: 2
Let's see what Bill thinks...

http://gizmodo.com/342920/holy-crap-did-bill-gates...

Yeah, it was asked by Gizmodo, but a question is a question and an answer is an answer (though a bit oblique).


RE: Read the article people
By SectionEight on 1/15/2008 5:08:53 PM , Rating: 2
Or if they have used Vista, they used it like it was XP instead of learning how to use it like intended. My first mistake was configuring Vista to look and run like XP; I've since learned from that mistake and am much happier.


RE: Read the article people
By MonkeyPaw on 1/15/2008 6:05:24 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, every time MS introduces a new OS, I hear the same arguments. When Win95 came out, people claimed it to be bloated, unstable, and simply a visual improvement over Win 3.1. The launch of Win98 had its infamous "crash on Bill Gates" debacle, and WinMe, was...well...WinMe (personally, I never had a single problem with it).

When XP arrived, many claimed it to be bloated and buggy, and that Win9x was the only way to play games. It took more than a year of driver improvements and several years for game developers to catch up, and they've done so well that now it seems that no one can pry XP out of people's hands.

Now Vista shows up, and we hear the same old story. Bloated, slow, buggy, hardware requirements are too great, etc. Honestly, of all the launches of new MS OSes, Vista has by far been the best out-of-the-box. I've used it since RC1 on basic hardware (integrated graphics), and it just runs great.


RE: Read the article people
By The0ne on 1/16/2008 9:18:48 AM , Rating: 2
Having a piece of crappy bloated software release is not the same as having a previous crappy bloated version running stable with patches. In the end both are still crappy bloated pieces of software during their time but the previous is just more stable because of fixes and patches. So why not stick with the previous crappy bloated but STABLE version when there's very little to gain from the new version? That is until it becomes a crappy bloated STABLE version in itself.

:)


RE: Read the article people
By Christopher1 on 1/16/2008 3:37:18 PM , Rating: 1
Vista is as stable as XP was, if not more. Personally, I never had XP blue-screen on me except the few times I had a driver conflict, something that I don't blame Vista for.

Thus far, I have only had Vista blue-screen once and that was when something got installed on my machine that I basically didn't want and didn't know how it got on there (found out later it was a Vista-hack for registration program), and it was causing blue-screens galore.


RE: Read the article people
By carl0ski on 1/15/2008 5:45:52 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The only thing this article really says is that BECTA says schools can't "upgrade" existing systems to Vista/Office 2007.


Maybe because you cannot purchase Windows XP nor 2007 any more maybe?

however it also mentions downgrading the new 2007 and Vista licences to XP - office 2003


RE: Read the article people
By Screwballl on 1/15/2008 9:38:43 PM , Rating: 2
try reading the originating story, not just what DT has posted here....

quote:
The agency said U.K. schools can consider using Vista or Office 2007 software only when they are buying new batches of PCs. Even then, however, they're advised to take a long looked at alternatives based on Linux and other open source products, such as the OpenOffice.org desktop package.


Even with new systems they are suggesting looking at alternatives to Vista and MSO 07


Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By Domicinator on 1/15/2008 5:12:15 PM , Rating: 1
Why does Jason Mick, in all of his pro-Apple anti-Vista "articles" continue to mention Vista being on that PC World list when OSX Leopard was on the same freakin' list????!!!!!!

To Jason--I don't know why your editorial opinion pieces are considered by DailyTech to be "news" but they are not. They're just a bunch of BS.




RE: Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 1/15/2008 5:36:26 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe you should bash PC World instead of Jason, since all Jason did was cite PC World.


RE: Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By noirsoft on 1/15/2008 5:44:48 PM , Rating: 2
Jason uses the PC World article as evidence of the supposed universal dissatisfaction with Vista. Meanwhile, he trumpets Leopard and completely fails to mention that Leopard made the same list of 2007 Tech Disappointments. That is hypocrisy or conveniently sloppy journalism at best.


RE: Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 1/15/2008 6:01:01 PM , Rating: 2
He also mentioned that Vista outsold Leopard, and that Leopard received glowing reviews. Both are also true.

There's nothing factually wrong or bias with his article, other than the fact that he didn't a mention PC World's #8 Leopard reference when compared to Vista's #1 reference. I personally think the writer of that PC World article needs to rethink #6, #3 and #2.

Let's not omit the fact that PC World is a very Windows-centric magazine anyway. I've never once seen a "Worst of" list that didn't include the entire Apple portfolio.

But #1 was something the entire publication staked its reputation on. It was all over the cover and God-knows-howmany blogs. The entire article was just a lead in for that #1 slot.

No, I think Jason was well within his journalistic integrity to omit items 15 through 2 on PC World's list. Maybe if Mac World listed Leopard as the number 1 "Worst" of 2007, then I could understand the need for a side-by-side.

Jason doesn't own a Mac by the way.


RE: Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By TomZ on 1/15/2008 6:10:17 PM , Rating: 2
I think any informed observer would say that the PC World choice for #1 was a joke - it was clearly a publicity stunt designed to generate controversy - one which unfortunately paid off for them. It may have generated short-term page hits, but I personally believe their decision showed a complete lack of integrity.


RE: Jason Mick, fanboy much?
By Domicinator on 1/15/2008 6:59:41 PM , Rating: 2
Well, if Jason doesn't own a Mac, Apple should give him free one. He seems to take joy in bashing Windows. And I've noticed that every time a new Apple product comes out, there's a new Jason Mick article. If he doesn't own a Mac, why is he the resident Mac expert at DailyTech?