Word - we dropped the ball

[worker201]

Microsoft Word will become illegal to sell on January 11, 2010.  That's like 3 weeks away, and I don't think anyone at this site picked up on the story.  Apparently they stole a patented XML implementation from a small company, who sued the shit out of them.  The article below implies that the entire tech industry assumed that the whole thing would blow over, and Microsoft would get around it.  But they didn't.  Current copies of Word will still be valid, and Microsoft can continue to support copies that have already been sold.  But new sales must cease immediately.  OpenOffice and Symphony downloads are probably going to skyrocket over the next few months.

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/158160

[Aloone_Jonez]

Fucking brilliant.

No doubt they'll find a fix before the deadline though or they might deem it cheaper to break the law and be fined.

If they stop selling MS Office, not only will alternative office suits benefit I think it'll also push piracy up. I think it's too optimistic to presume that everyone who want MS Office and can no longer get it will change to a competing product, the chances are many will just pirate it.

[davidnix71]

Does OO have a stripped down "word" version? It's a cd sized download otherwise.

[Aloone_Jonez]

That's one of the most annoying things about OpenOffice: you have to download the whole thing.

The only thing I can suggest is AbiWord but it's not quite as feature rich as OpenOffice Writer.

[worker201]

The fact that you can't get just OpenOffice Writer might be beside the point, because you can't buy Microsoft Office without Word.  I find it hard to believe that business people will buy Excel, Powerpoint, and Access as standalone packages and then go shopping for some other word processor.  I also feel compelled to point out that home users, who could probably get away with piracy, are not really a serious component of Microsoft's core business.  Large business clients, who purchase multi-seat licenses, are the big spenders, and they can't just go browsing on PirateBay.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Large firms often have site licence for a certain number of seats rather than paying for every single copy of the software installed so I don't see how it will make any difference unless they want to upgrade or buy a load more computers. If a company is worried, they just need to buy more licences before the deadline.

[davidnix71]

Think OO's size is bad? I just went looking for the OSX dmg installer for MacTex (LaTeX native for OSX) and gagged. 1.3 GB.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Wtf it's normally only about 200MB, if not less. The *NIX version always seems to be larger than the Windows version.

I remember downloading OpenOffice when I was on dialup, it wasn't too bad. I remember leaving it to download overnight. I had to use a download manager and auto-disconnect and redial every hour because my telephone service provider only gave me the first hour of any call free.

May be LaTeX is responsible for half the bloat?

AbiWord has a LaTeX add-on.

[Lead Head]

Yeah, OpenOffice is about 130-200MB last I remember (which was a few days ago anyways), which is not nearly CD Size (700MB).

As far as  the ban on Word goes, I'm quite surprised. Generally companies like Microsoft will just give in and pay what the small company wants instead of taking it to court.

[reactosguy]

I hope Microsoft delays the fix... so far, Word is BS, and even the Ribbon is a large, distracting strip of tabs. It's nothing but eye candy designed to appeal to the clueless.

[_ZeroBeta]

I hope Microsoft delays the fix... so far, Word is BS, and even the Ribbon is a large, distracting strip of tabs. It's nothing but eye candy designed to appeal to the clueless.

I must admit this: I managed to get hold of a genuine copy for about £35, bought only because uninstalling the trial version would have voided my netbook's warranty. This is the very reason I find Word 2007 to be a pain to use, since the ribbon gets in the way more than providing any useful functions or shortcuts. Sure, it looks rather nice and draws in the inexperienced bozo, but that's hardly a compliment. In light of this news, I can see many businesses who rely on MSOffice rushing to buy more licenses before the deadline looms over them. Switching to OpenOffice would likely cost them a lot in man-hours and training costs - not that they likely can't already afford it.

[Calum]

Wtf it's normally only about 200MB, if not less. The *NIX version always seems to be larger than the Windows version.

could be static compiling to blame, is my guess. I could be wrong though.

So, here are the two updates i found about this on El Reg, the second one describes the other shoe falling, quite anticlimactically actually, i think.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/microsoft_loses_word_patent_appeal/
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/12/23/word_xml_patch_oems/

There are still a lot of questions to be answered about how MS plans to handle this though and what it means in real terms.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The real problem with switching is more about VBA script and format compatibility issues.

OpenOffice is very similar to MS Office 2003 interface-wise, in fact it's often criticised for trying to emulate MS Office too well.

How does MS Office 2007 compare speed wise with other versions?

I've always found OpenOffice.org to be slower, even with the pre-loader but I haven't used any MS Office after 2003.

Office suites have been over featured for years. MS Office 97 is still fine for most purposes, I was using it up until 2008 at work. OpenOffice 2.4.3 is good and 1.1.5 is too - I'd recommend an old OOo version over AbiWord and Gnumeric any day, for old hardware.

[Refalm]

The real problem with switching is more about VBA script and format compatibility issues.

Go-OO (a number of 3rd party patches to OpenOffice.org) is supposed to fix that:
http://go-oo.org/discover/#vba-support

[reactosguy]

Go-OO (a number of 3rd party patches to OpenOffice.org) is supposed to fix that:
http://go-oo.org/discover/#vba-support

Didn't I tell you about that on MicrosoftSucks.org?