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RE: but who really had to have it to function?..
It's exactly the opposite here as several of the places that I do work for actually had Office 2007 and because the submit Tenders Electronically to Government Departments who require this in DOC form they dumped the Office 2007 in favor of Office 2003.
Better to use an older product that they are sure will be looked at rather than have a tender dumped in the rubbish because some bureaucrat can not open it. One of the first small tenders submitted in 2007 was for a 200 Million job and they freaked when they where told that the Receiver couldn't open the tender. A few months latter the Government started placing the DOC Format requirement on all tenders announced/advertised so the new version of office was dumped because it's Native Format was not DOC.
It's a very expensive mistake to send in something in the native format and forget to convert it tot he required format. Then the fact that not everything formatted correctly when it native format was changed didn't help all that much either.
As for as waiting a couple of years to change as this is related to their Life Expectancy and Budget which specifies a 5 year turn around for most hardware it's hardly surprising that they don't want to change straight away. I have several clients with Software Advantage from M$ and they don't consider installing anything new when it first arrives. They test before deploying and then it is generally at least 12 -18 months before any deployment of something that doesn't require new hardware.
Even when Vista hit the streets one client had a 12 month old Canon Photocopier which they used as a network Printer which didn't have Vista Drivers available so after M$ told them to buy a new printer they decided that the Computers cost a few K each all 5 of them as apposed to the 45 K they where still paying off and made a Executive Decision to forget Vista as it was way too expensive for them.
They did replace all of their hardware within 8 months of Vista being released but insisted on having everything supplied with XP. This was after a M$ Representative paid them a visit to show them just how great Vista was. Since that time I do not dare deliver anything to them with a Vista Ready or Vista Compatible as on the one occasion that I did I got thrown out along with a new NB and told never to bring anything relating to Vista there ever again. Not sure exactly what happened but I did warn M$ that it wasn't a particularly cleaver idea trying to push Vista onto this crowd.
Col
Better to use an older product that they are sure will be looked at rather than have a tender dumped in the rubbish because some bureaucrat can not open it. One of the first small tenders submitted in 2007 was for a 200 Million job and they freaked when they where told that the Receiver couldn't open the tender. A few months latter the Government started placing the DOC Format requirement on all tenders announced/advertised so the new version of office was dumped because it's Native Format was not DOC.
It's a very expensive mistake to send in something in the native format and forget to convert it tot he required format. Then the fact that not everything formatted correctly when it native format was changed didn't help all that much either.
As for as waiting a couple of years to change as this is related to their Life Expectancy and Budget which specifies a 5 year turn around for most hardware it's hardly surprising that they don't want to change straight away. I have several clients with Software Advantage from M$ and they don't consider installing anything new when it first arrives. They test before deploying and then it is generally at least 12 -18 months before any deployment of something that doesn't require new hardware.
Even when Vista hit the streets one client had a 12 month old Canon Photocopier which they used as a network Printer which didn't have Vista Drivers available so after M$ told them to buy a new printer they decided that the Computers cost a few K each all 5 of them as apposed to the 45 K they where still paying off and made a Executive Decision to forget Vista as it was way too expensive for them.
They did replace all of their hardware within 8 months of Vista being released but insisted on having everything supplied with XP. This was after a M$ Representative paid them a visit to show them just how great Vista was. Since that time I do not dare deliver anything to them with a Vista Ready or Vista Compatible as on the one occasion that I did I got thrown out along with a new NB and told never to bring anything relating to Vista there ever again. Not sure exactly what happened but I did warn M$ that it wasn't a particularly cleaver idea trying to push Vista onto this crowd.
Col
Moderator Posted by HAL 9000
5th Aug 2009
