What, exactly, is not to like?

1) Personally, there is nothing I actually use in Off07, that was not in Off95.

2) I have thousands of DOC and PPT files from Off95. Your suggestion would be that I open each of these in Off00, save in Off00 format, open each of these in Off03, save in Off03 format, then buy the latest OffXX suite, re-open, and resave the files? Oh. And do this every few years to keep up with MS supported formats?

3) Lack of data security – ie having inaccessible data – is something that was discussed *way back* at the start of the digital age. Early on it was clear that continued access to data might require preservation of the program that created it, the OS the program ran on, and the physical interface used. At the time, MS assured the world that “Word DOC would always be supported.”

So, most of us do not have the time, or interest, to spend herding data from one format to the next: Thus, most of us will continue to have occasion to “use {something} that old.”

In any event, MS could have saved me, and many others, a few hours of work in figuring out what had happened, had it simply been mentioned on the install of the SP.

It is, as often, MS’s arrogant disregard of their client’s data, and time, that is so annoying about this.

Also if they allowed these dodgy file formats and machine got infected, you guys would probably be the first to slate them. You cant always have security and convienience.

We could move to open source but to be honest, there isnt any software worth paying for, and there certainly isnt any free. Openoffice for example is way overpriced and the damn things free.

I have been keeping Windows XP Professional (SP2) around for a couple of years, because — before an illness that has kept me from working for a year — I have done technical writing for 25 years (mostly using Windows and Office) and have worked from home and needed to keep up with the latest versions of features of Office.

I felt that I needed to keep a machine running Windows at home for the sake of my so-called career in technical writing. (Positions are rare in my part of the US.)

(Incidentally, I have designed Web sites for nonprofits since 1994. Although I have never designed a Web site running Windows or even software for Windows via, say, WINE, I have the constant headache of having to make sites look decent and function when viewed with non-W3W-compliant browsers — and Internet Explorer has been the biggest headache. The Web was meant to be platform and browser independent, but Netscape and Microsoft started mucking up matters soon after I made an almost instant transition from creating Gopher sites (hand-coding via the UNIX or Linux shell, depending on the server) to hand-coding HTML documents and uploading all of the HTML files, images, and multimedia via FTP.

Proprietary Web documents, especially the horrible ones I’ve seen created by MS FrontPage and Word, defeat the strength and purpose of the Web — not to mention the dilemma of deciding whether or not, and how, to “hack” CSS so that pages appear at least somewhat properly with browsers (e.g, Internet Explorer) that cannot handle X/HTML documents and style sheets that are in valid W3C format.

I soon learned the importance of standards and the consequences of not following them.

When I started receiving Word 2007 documents and could not open them with Word 2002/XP or Word 2003, I realized that a major problem was looming.

Microsoft wants their XML/Word format to be accepted as a “second standard,” instead of adhering to the ODF standard. A single open standard is the only way for the free exchange of documents.

I refused to upgrade Office XP Professional to Office 2003, and I was “safe” sending my resume or other Word documents to IT recruiters and others, but the changes in Word 2007 present a major problem for organizations and individuals.

A Dell Dimension 8300 that I purchased used in early 2006 is “Vista Ready,” according to what a Dell representative told me, but the 8x Nvidia card will not support Aero and the puny power supply, which cannot be upgraded, does not provide enough wattage for AGP cards that fully support Vista.

I had no plans to upgrade to Vista anyway, but proprietary software and document formats are part of a larger problem that includes proprietary hardware. I remembered why I have been building my own computers after dealing with this Dell, which also has insufficient cooling!

Many OEMs have been forced to offer the option of having Windows XP preinstalled on their computers, instead of Vista, but only a few OEMs offer personal computers with Linux preinstalled (e.g., Dell installing Ubuntu on selected models, with Europeans getting more options than Americans), but I wonder what will happen when individuals want to upgrade to a new release of Ubuntu, for example.

Although I am sure that Microsoft is displeased that OEMs have offered Linux preinstalled on servers for several years, Microsoft also knows that it can always offer the highest incentives to OEMs, because it has the deepest pockets.

This latest fiasco with document formats has led me to decide to stop using Windows altogether on my own computers. (The fact that I need to perform a “clean” reinstallation of Windows XP Professional because it takes literally over five minutes to shut down is no longer a problem, because I can simply erase the entire drive to correct the problem with Windows.)

Windows and Office will continue to dominate, but Microsoft’s ongoing security problems, bloated Vista, and this latest fiasco with Office documents clearly are not to Microsoft’s advantage!

Meanwhile, open standards and open-source software and operating systems are making major advances and becoming attractive to businesses and consumers who have always used Microsoft products.

Cordially,

David

“After widespread anger broke out within the user community, Microsoft posted a registry hack that would unblock the files. Still, Microsoft warns, “Unless you need to work with these very old file types on a regular basis, it’s probably not a good idea to keep these file types unblocked for long periods of time.” The spokesperson, Microsoft Office product manager Reed Shaffner, fails to mention what should be done if one does need ongoing access to older documents.”