Freitag Juli 29, 2005

How Microsoft will try to get more money from Office users
"But likely to prove controversial is Microsoft intention to charge users an additional "premium" client access licenses (CAL) to use these higher-end versions of Office and Windows. Ballmer and other executives were light on specifics today, although in the Office market at least Microsoft seems to be going beyond its current high-end edition of Office Professional Edition, which is priced at $388.49 per copy.
...
"We will... introduce higher-value versions of existing products that really help us drive new growth and new value. We did that with the Professional edition of our Windows product, and it drove literally billions of dollars of revenue growth versus the home version," Ballmer said.
...
Microsoft's decision to introduce more SKUs and charge higher prices, though, will expose the company to more accusations from competitors that is gouging customers while IT budgets are tight. Sun Microsystems has been pushing StarOffice as a low-priced, subscription-based alternative to Office to help customers overcome the pricing issue."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:21:39 PM CEST ) Permalink

Great recommendation!
"Corine has MS Works, but says it is not compatible with the more widely used Microsoft Word. She wants to know if there is a viable alternative that won't irritate her limited budget?

In the past I've suggested Open Office, at www.openoffice.org, as a reasonably compatible suite of programs that in many cases works as well as the hugely popular Microsoft product, though it is a little lean on extras.

There are converters available for MS Works, but users of Open Office do rave about its level of compatibility. Being free open-source software, it is a continuing development project based initially on the Sun Microsystems commercial product StarOffice."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:08:08 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Sharing files between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office"
"Even if you're the most dedicated OpenOffice.org (OOo) user in the world, sooner or later you'll be asked to share files with someone using Microsoft Office. Some free software advocates refuse outright, or suggest outputting to HTML, PDF, or RTF formats, but these aren't always options -- especially if your boss is the one doing the asking. However, with a few preparations and a sense of what works and what doesn't, you can usually share files with Microsoft Office users with a minimum of headaches on both sides. Here's how."
The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 12:07:02 PM CEST ) Permalink

OpenOffice.org at city of about 100,000
"Schall says there were no major issues with the migration to Linux on either the server or the desktop. The city never used Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft on the desktop and so is in the process of transitioning from WordPerfect to OpenOffice.

advertisement "For the most part, everybody is happy," says Schall, who adds that OpenOffice integrates smoothly with Microsoft Word and Excel documents.

A key benefit of using open source applications such as OpenOffice and the Firefox Latest News about Firefox Web browser is that they are platform independent, says Tig Kerkman, Kenosha's network administrator.

"So my users can download OpenOffice for free and use it at home on whatever hardware they have," he says."

The full article can be found here.
( Jul 29 2005, 11:58:24 AM CEST ) Permalink