Fedora

Bug #1 (liberation)
Comment #1736

Comment 1736 for bug 1

Revision history for this message

Tom (tom6) wrote on 2012-12-09: Re: [Bug 1] Re: Microsoft has a majority market share

#1736

Hi :)

The problem with the MS Office formats us that they are not consistent across different versions of MS Office itself. The version they have managed to get registered as an ISO standard is different again. Even worse is that MS's installer claims there will be inconsistences between even the same version of MSO on their different OSes. So a document written in MSO 2010 on Win7 may well have problems when opened in MSO 2010 on Win Xp.

The places the blame on any user that doesn't upgrade to the latest version of their OS at the time when everyone else does and their latest version of MS Office when everyone else does. When only a minority upgrade those people get a little flack from people for causing problems but their counter argument is that everyone else is being cheap and risking security problems. Once critical mass is achieved everyone else is seen as being guilty if they haven't already upgraded and feels guilty themselves.

So, when it's an MS program that fails to read an older version of the current MS format then it's the author that gets blamed. When it's a non-MS program then it's IT Support or the program that gets blamed.

The newest version of MS Office (called 365 this time) claims to have proper support for OpenDocument Format 1.2. MSO 2010 and 2007 only supported ODF 1.0 which was quite a long way behind what all the other Office Suites were using at the time. So MS were able to claim they supported ODF and try to blame all the other Suites for any problems.

The question is why don't people realise what is right in front of their eyes. Why aren't they worried about what is going to happen to their old documents. They seem to just accept and be happy with the fact that any documents they might need to access in a few years time, say around 5years, needs to be printed out because it wont be readable otherwise. How is it that people are ok with that??

Of course some organisations (such as the US Senate allegedly) decide to settle on a format based on MS's promises that they will always be able to read it and then find that MS has already started withdrawing support for it. Again that somehow leads to non-MS programs being treated with suspicion.

Regards from
Tom :)

Hi :)

The problem with the MS Office formats us that they are not consistent across different versions of MS Office itself.  The version they have managed to get registered as an ISO standard is different again.  Even worse is that MS's installer claims there will be inconsistences between even the same version of MSO on their different OSes.  So a document written in MSO 2010 on Win7 may well have problems when opened in MSO 2010 on Win Xp.

The places the blame on any user that doesn't upgrade to the latest version of their OS at the time when everyone else does and their latest version of MS Office when everyone else does.  When only a minority upgrade those people get a little flack from people for causing problems but their counter argument is that everyone else is being cheap and risking security problems.  Once critical mass is achieved everyone else is seen as being guilty if they haven't already upgraded and feels guilty themselves.

So, when it's an MS program that fails to read an older version of the current MS format then it's the author that gets blamed.  When it's a non-MS program then it's IT Support or the program that gets blamed.

The newest version of MS Office (called 365 this time) claims to have proper support for OpenDocument Format 1.2.  MSO 2010 and 2007 only supported ODF 1.0 which was quite a long way behind what all the other Office Suites were using at the time.  So MS were able to claim they supported ODF and try to blame all the other Suites for any problems.

The question is why don't people realise what is right in front of their eyes.  Why aren't they worried about what is going to happen to their old documents.  They seem to just accept and be happy with the fact that any documents they might need to access in a few years time, say around 5years, needs to be printed out because it wont be readable otherwise.  How is it that people are ok with that??

Of course some organisations (such as the US Senate allegedly) decide to settle on a format based on MS's promises that they will always be able to read it and then find that MS has already started withdrawing support for it.  Again that somehow leads to non-MS programs being treated with suspicion.

Regards from
Tom :)