

Microsoft quietly shuts down Office Genuine Advantage program - ilamont
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-quietly-shuts-down-office-genuine-advantage-program/2798

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ShabbyDoo
Microsoft relies on Office piracy as a strange means of price discrimination.
The product requires network effects to maintain its near-monopoly position in
the corporate world, and having a significant portion of people in "document
sharing" networks say, "I don't have Office" is a threat. So, what Microsoft's
quietly made decision says to me is that they are worried that a sufficiently
large enough portion of computer users were both unwilling to pay for Office
and unwilling to bother pirating it.

On Black Friday, many online retailers were running specials on a Home/Student
Office "Family Pack" -- three legal installs for $100. This is a midpoint
between the corporate price point and free. Perhaps an attempt to introduce
another segment? I recall the availability of home/student editions in the
past, but the price points were always much higher.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think Microsoft is attempting to target students more aggressively, perhaps
because of the appearance of other cheap/free options on the market in recent
years. Just last year Office 2007 was on sale to students at $60.

~~~
iends
The university my wife attends (in the USA) has some kind of weird site
license where students get it for free from the IT department if they are
willing to drop off their laptop with the university. (This isn't a bad deal,
since probably the average freshman also buys their laptop from the university
anyway). They can pay $10 to get the DVD themselves. (This is a very large
state supported school.)

My school (even larger and state supported) charges like $92 for the same
thing.

I've not figured out why two almost identical schools about 20 miles apart
have such a different pricing scheme for their students.

I do know that in our relationship, my wife buys all the software. :)

~~~
jf
The difference in pricing is likely due to the schools participating in
different programs. Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in
seeing your school have a similar program as the one your wife attends. I
would be happy to put you in touch with someone who'll know more about that
topic than I do.

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latch
I'm a fan of MS Word, I really am. These days though, I find that, as an
amateur writer, I prefer simpler tools - markdown or google docs. I _think_
this is a slow trend they are (or should be) worried about.

For home users, gmail thoroughly beats Outlook.

Excel is a different beast. I don't have much experience with it, but I've
seen it used widely at various places of work (medical and financial). I'd say
Excel is now their strongest product when it comes to maintaining a
stranglehold.

When you consider the price, advances in google docs, gmail and and
OpenOffice, I'm not sure Office is really a good value for most folk. They
_think_ they need it - that's a dangerous position to be in - selling a
product because people _think_ they need it, rather than actually needing it.

~~~
veb
Agreed.

In my opinion, Word is the best app ever to come from Microsoft.

~~~
yardie
I disagree, Excel is the best app ever to come out of Microsoft! :-)

I've done entire engineering courses (200 and 300-level) with nothing but
Excel. And there are certainly more powerful applications to do maths in but
once you get past the simple interface it real is quite powerful.

~~~
forgotAgain
Agreed, Excel is an amazing app. It's also Microsoft's strongest hold on
businesses. I doubt there is more than a couple percent of businesses that
don't depend on Excel in some fashion for their accounting.

Every company I've been in has Excel spreadsheets for things like budgets and
expense tracking. They were all written long ago and no one is really quite
sure how they work.

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danshapiro
A lot of commenters seem confused about this: you still have to validate
Office to get it to work, or pirate it to circumvent the check. The change is
that Microsoft will let you download Office add-ons without verifying that
said validation occurred, so pirate versions can now access the downloads.

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iwwr
If you run a print/copy shop or need Office for precise in-company document
compatibility (or addins), you will want MS Office and you will easily afford
a license or two.

As for everyone else, OpenOffice has 99% of the features, so it's not even
worth the trouble of pirating it.

~~~
omh
_As for everyone else, OpenOffice has 99% of the features, so it's not even
worth the trouble of pirating it._

But pirating it just got a little bit easier, so Microsoft have shifted the
balance a little away from OpenOffice.

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S_A_P
Excel is the tool of choice for non techies who need "database like"
functionality but the word database scares the crap out of them. Large
companies wrap multi million dollar businesses around Excel, and I think there
will always be a market for an app like this.

I only recently began using Office 2010 at my office and feel like this is
what office 2003(or if Im feeling generous, 2007) should have been. Outlook is
an anachronism as far as Im concerned- even connected to exchange. There are
so many modal features about it still that are infuriating, but its getting to
an almost gmail usability level. If gmail integrated calendaring as well as
outlook I would forward all my work email to a gmail address and never touch
outlook.

MsWord stil is hands down much better than any free equivalent I have tried,
but I only need this app ~5 - 10 times per year.

I wish they had an "Office for people who really dont need office that much"
version that was on some sort of azure/pay for need basis(where the cost was
minimal and paying wasn't) because that is what I need. I dont want to have a
few GB of hardly used real estate on my hard disk for when I need to update a
resume.

~~~
Ingaz
>>Excel is the tool of choice for non techies who need "database like"
functionality but the word database scares the crap out of them.

In fact I use Excel only as client for MS Analysis Services. It's my tool of
choice. Not flawless, but I can't find something better.

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compay
Microsoft releasing actual legitimate open source code
(<http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/>) , and relaxing restrictions on
"piracy." Next thing you know, Windows 9 will be based on Linux.

~~~
sliverstorm
_Next thing you know, Windows 9 will be based on Linux._

I don't think I'd stop partying & celebrating for at _least_ a week. Non-stop.

That is my personal private dream- that one day, Windows will have a true Unix
core like OSX.

~~~
epochwolf
I think Microsoft would just run chmod 777 and chown root:wheel to the entire
filesystem (and any attached disks) and then proceed to run everything as root
with a special sandbox for users based on ACLs.

And they would probably use ext2 and add journals to it.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I'm not sure if that's supposed to be funny, but Microsoft's own NTFS bests
_all_ of the last generation of filesystems in both features, stability, and
performance.

Only recently have unix filesysetms matched and surpassed NTFS (which was
built back in the very early 90s!). reisrfs, btrfs, xfs, jfs, zfs, etc. are
better than NTFS in some ways, but all the "traditional" unix filesystems do
not even come close (ext2/3, hfs, ufs).

~~~
rbanffy
> NTFS bests all of the last generation of filesystems in both features,

Definitely no.

> stability,

So close to 100% it's hard to measure any difference. Well... Perhaps it beats
BtrFS and other experimental/unfinished products. But, again, it doesn't beat
it in features.

> and performance

One thing is sure - NTFS is the fastest OS on Windows.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Please re-read my post. I said "last generation" and not "this/next
generation"

I clearly specify that btrfs is a better FS than NTFS. But btrfs is NOT from
last generation.

~~~
rbanffy
Well... I agree that 2010 NTFS beats a lot of filesystems that were released
in 2002 or so. That was kind of expected.

It's also notable NTFS is now catching up to some features that were part of
Unix-heritage filesystems since the 90's. Like symlinks and mountpoints.

~~~
foljs
Eh, "2010 NTFS"? NTFS is more than decade old and it's 2002 version was also
better than a lot of filesystem "released in 2002".

And NTFS had mountpoints since Windows 2000.

~~~
rbanffy
Correct - mount points are part of 2000 (NTFS 3). I have no doubt NTFS 3 was
better than some filesystems released in 2002, provided enough people released
filesystems in 2002. It was also probably better than many filesystems still
in use on 2002.

Still, NTFS is catching up to other modern features like symlinks...

AFAIK, which is somewhat limited because I am not a Windows user and don't
work in a Microsoft shop, NTFS has some cool features, like transactions, I
don't think ext3 had. It also has compression (something that makes a lot of
sense if you have more processor than disk bandwidth or space) and folder
encryption. Oh.. And transactions. Did I miss something?

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wccrawford
I'm kind of surprised by this. If they had just shut down the bit that forces
you to validate, but left a way for you to validate your copy, that would make
more sense to me.

I mean, some people might genuinely want to know for sure.

Of course, it's possible that they shut this down while they put up something
even more bothersome.

~~~
jcromartie
> I mean, some people might genuinely want to know for sure.

Are these the same people that want to go through TSA screenings just to make
sure they aren't dangerous?

~~~
martey
I have known people who bought used computers or Office software, and had no
idea that their software was pirated until they attempted to reinstall it.
While it is sometimes obvious when software is pirated, it often is not.

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andreyf
Arr, my mateys, the battle is ours!

