Discussion on:

Microsoft loses yet another fanboy

Before vista, I only dabbled in the Linux world. But then, I saw vista as a badly handle product. Not a bad product, just badly handled. That made me think MS wasn't even caring about making the use of their product a good experience. Paying for this kind of customer satisfaction seemed stupid.

So my use of Linux got a lot more serious from then on. Now, I'm on ArchLinux and OpenOffice, and you couldn't get me to use anything else without a galactic sized argument.

I don't want to rent my software. I don't want my licence to be permanently licenced to one computer. So this sort of "crap" is only keeping me further away from MS products. MS is taking the "you don't own the software" idea behind their EULA a little too far. It' not the computer which should be licenced to use the software, it should be me as I'm the one paying for it all.

I'm really curious to see where this will go.

But all commercial shrink wrap software is on a rental basis with no warranty other than the bits are shiny. That's why I prefer open source. You don't really own it unless you have the source code.

This outcry over office licensing is puzzling. I assume folks who would be upset over MS-Office are already running a Windows OS that that has been tied via license terms to one computer since WinXP days. (Don't confuse the ability to install on multiple platforms with license compliance.)

My personal experience with OEM is that if your motherboard suffers catastrophic failure and that was the reason you upgraded the MS phone support critters will authorize you on the new computer (Office 2013 still has that language in the terms).

There's even a good chance MS won't screw you over because your motherboard fried itself. But should really have to deal with MS, just because your motherboard fried?

It seem like a hassle that I can, and actually do without, now that I use free - as in freedom - software. I don't have to worry so much about licencing for my small office with free software, which the proposed licensing discussed here actually makes things worse.

I don't want to deal with a weird idea like my software being tied to my hardware. Nevermind if it's fair, or if MS will or won't screw me over because of bad PC hardware. I just don't want to deal with such things. I imagine that the "outcry" pretty much resembles my position on the matter.

I've usually had no problem (other than the supreme hassle of having to call them) getting windows relicensed in the event of motherboard or some other component failure. But on at least 2 occasions I can recall atm I was told basically to stick it. These were full boxed versions, not OEM.

I concluded that it's a judgment call on the part of the CSR you happen to get on the phone. If they don't like you for some reason, well, Tough S#!t.

One of those occasions was in the middle of elevated public awareness of outsourcing, people were amazed that Microsoft support landed your call somewhere in India.

The techs would tell you their name is "Tim Smith" or other "American" sounding name, despite the thick accent. Some of these "Smiths" were just about incomprehensible.

I asked "Tim" where he was, and was surprised that they were trained to lie, he said something like "Kansas City." I remember someone saying if you suspect the fellow is lying to follow up with a question about the weather in "Kansas City" today.

I asked the fellow about his weather and he replied generically, "it's ok," so I pressed him with "getting a little rain today?" At that the fellow said something about wasting his time and let's get back to the problem at hand. He was obviously mad at me, knowing that I was pressing him to admit he was in India.

He eventually told us that his "records" showed out product ID was installed on more than one set of hardware simultaneously. There was no way this was the case, it was a customer of mine who had only the one computer, and no children or other usual suspect who might have used his windows disk. (it was XP)

Sorry for the rant, I'm set off by the appearance that MS is actually making this kind of rip off their official policy nowadays. At least in the past you had a chance to suck up to the tech and beg your way into a new product ID.

not too many people know that ;0

Agree with you. His dismissing of the reasonable "outcry" from users is pathetic. It is the say way, that users who find using the square blocks on a Laptop to be frustrating, non-intuitive resulting in more loss of productivity, treated as though they do not have a right to complain. The learning curve to use those square blocks and typing in a search field for most applications you wish to use, is not worth that pain. It does not offer more speed and ease of use than the Win 7 UI.

Just puzzled that the folks complaining accept tying the underlying OS to hardware but not the office suite.At least with WinXP activation was a new and loathsome feature...

http://redmondmag.com/articles/2001/10/21/outcry-spurs-changes-in-activation-procedure.aspx

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2030120/microsoft-caves-to-office-2013-licensing-backlash.html

And as evidenced above user complaints are heard in Redmond, they apparently have changed Office 2013 licensing just as they softened WinXP license activation a decade ago. You really ought to stay up on these things before posting.

Microsoft would say allow you to move it multiple machines with a limit per yearly. For example, I could move it say 10 times. If one machine failed and quickly brought up another and installed my license, it too could fail. By then I would fix the original and go back and so forth. So even though this may not be the scenario, I should have that option, without having to call for MS tech support! Imagine if you could only get a driver's license if you own a vehicle and then it is tied to that vehicle! What happens when you have to rent? Or if your car dies and you buy a new one? I really hope the developers of Libre Office can make it perform and even give you a skin to look like MS Office. This change and the new look UI for WIn8 already has me completely frustrated, to the point where I do not even want to use Win 8 on a tablet or a phone.

You can transfer Office 2013 every 90 days.

Every time a major UI paradigm has come out it's engendered negative comment. (and I remember when X11 was first introduced :)) So far Metro is only a splash screen away from the desktop for me thus not worthy of complaint.

On the Nokia phones I've played with Metro seems really nice (in some respects better than iOS with regards to information delivery customization)

So is your frustration of the Who moved my cheese sort? Or does Metro break things?

This only applies to home users, I work in a company with over 1000 licences and we deploy them all without having to do this as we have a KMS server.

Dont rush to hate MS so quickly without doing your research!

I didn't know that.

On a Microsoft product? Is it possible?

I don't think so. Just another way for Jack to put down Microsoft. He will never respond to any of these comments directed at him.

we will get loads of negative ratings for these comments but its true. this article is a load of rubbish

This is the year for Linux to conquer the desktop. Or was that 2003? Been there, heard that...

Android, a fork of Linux, has conquered the phone and tablets, and now, because Microsoft wants to ride on that wave, they have designed an operating system for the phone. Their big mistake is thinking that just because the user interface is popular on phones that it will also be popular on desktop and laptop computers. People expect user interfaces on computers to behave in a different way and in a way they are used to. Since Microsoft has changed the user interface, many Linux distributions are more similar to older version of Windows than even Microsoft's latest operating system.

User incentives for remaining with Microsoft are growing fewer and fewer by the day.
I'm not saying this is the year, but as time goes by, I see more people getting into Linux.
Microsoft, in inflicting more bureaucracy on users while charging a hefty price in this economy for something when free alternatives are available, are slowly whittling away their customer base. If Microsoft wants to remain a serious competitor and regain customers, it is going to need to quit this sort of crap and start once again creating innovative products that people "have got to have."
Those I personally deal with, once they have used Linux for a couple of weeks, never want to go back.

Our company will absolutely not adopt a change of this nature. We still utilize 2008 because of some significant changes to 2011. Silly things like the way spreadsheets print. I get the finger pointed at me from the not so tech savy exec's that just expect it to work. It gets old after upgrading and every version seems to have show stopping changes. We work through them and move on. Now this? Time to start changing. We can hobble along but what about new purchases? More concerned about our merges and data computing that we utilize exports out of our database to .csv or .tab then import into excel for manipulation, prior to a merge.

Change is good though i suppose. I am not removing the fanboy status because i love windows but I will dust off my old officeXP cd, and hold on to our 2008/2011 office software.

I have developed using Visual Basic for Windows and would like to see MS flourish. But the horrible interface of Windows 8 and the latest MS Office 2013 licensing shenanigans will eventually decrease MS popularity substantially. I equally use Linux and Windows 7 (Win 7 host to Linux virtual machine). If more and more people flock to Linux, I could see myself porting my applications to Linux. Good luck MS and I hope you listen to all the important feedback.

I have been gradually converting our users to Apache OpenOffice, Mozilla Thunderbird and Firefox. Our production systems require Windows O/S, so we can't go Linux for workstations. But we don't have to kneel down to Micro$oft, either.

If each Win 8 license is permanently tied to the first piece of hardware it is installed on, what does that mean for the two virtual machines on two separate pieces of hardware I have installed Win 8 Pro on? Are the licenses now permanently tied to virtual machines?

Then it wouldn't know it's on a different computer.

I'll just say that I've not investigated either of these, because my impression is that to use them you have to have an open connection to the internet. That's just my impression, and it may be wrong, and there is some way to use it offline. Can anyone tell me if my impression is correct? I use Libre Office at home, and like it a lot better than office 2007 and 2010.

As far as Linux goes, I've made the decision that I'll not go to any flavor of Windows 8, as I find it to be completely horrible. I'm not a 5 year old that needs big blocks in primary colors to find my way around. When it comes time to replace my laptop, I'll search around and see if I can find one already built with some flavor of Linux. That's kind of hard to find around here, but I should be able to order one.

i think this post is another example of closed-minded Microsoft bashing without researching the details, simply to provoke the readers who still think of Microsoft as the evil giant in used to be in the days of 95 and 98.

NT

I wouldn't say Microsoft is suddenly not evil, or not gigantic. But on the scale of things, times have indeed changed. They have lost about half their corporate value since 2000. There have been good alternatives to Windows for some purposes, like software development, for years, but they're still growing. The Office alternatives are all offering platform neutral options, my last company left Office and Exchange for Google and never looked back. Current company was already there.

There was a time when Microsoft saw someone else's success in some market segment, took aim, and owned that market. That's not really happening anymore. Sure, they're still cloning, just not so successfully. They lost billions in gaming, now they're minimally profitable, not in control. They went after modern smartphones, but lost market share in 2012. Now they're sacrificing traditional Windows users at the alter of the tablet, driving us away, but not ruling the tablet world. I'm fine with tablets ... typing on one. Not from Microsoft. Between Apple and Android, two rival and growing personal computing platforms have emerged in Microsoft's shadow... but not in the dark anymore.


Microsoft did good Blofeld back in the 80s and 90s. Today, they're still at it, but now doing their Dr. Evil impression. It's all sharks with lasers now...

I usually read Jack's articles because they are generally useful. But when it comes to microsoft Jack usually has a one track mind. I get it, Jack hates microsoft and has the right to use His column to vent. but honestly, it gets old very quickly.

All empires fall and MS will not be the exception, either by their own hand (due to repeated mistakes) or by the rise of something else, lets say linux. Who's to say that once there is enough money around linux it will not fell prey to the same temptations MS has?? by "linux" I refer to the software itself but also to the people that has a vested interest in it. once there is enough money on the table, the game will necessarily change. it may or may not be for good.

The Microsoft Phone last week?

Hardly bashing MS unless of course saying it's good is bashing.

Col

I didn't saw it, but now that you mention it I went looking for it and read it. I agree that its not a MS bashing article so point for you and Jack.

however, a single article doesn't change a whole trend, I still stand behind my original comment in which Jack going into MS bashing mode its the norm and not the exception.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't have an issue with jack, as I don't have an issue with him being so enthusiastic about linux and promoting it until he es blue in the face. I usually read his articles and when he is not in full bashing mode they are very good. I myself have been beneficiary of some of his software review articles. I'm not taking away jack's merit. But for whatever reason he has a personal bias against MS and it shows. it becomes annoying after a while. specially when compared against other writers on this same same that even when they disagree with something they are still able to maintain an objective, non-emotional point of view.

The problem is nobody outside of the IT world even knows that there are Office alternatives. Even when I suggest alternatives to people, they have been so indoctrinated with Office that they are suspicious of a free alternative or they're scared that it might not have the functionality that they "need."

If you are using some other software that is built to work with it you usually have little choice as to whether you use Office. Sometimes there is no alternative to that other piece of software so you are stuck with office.

I have had a lot of conversion errors when opening MS Office documents on Open Office.

Bill

opening MS Office documents with later versions of Office.

I remember it being a big deal when folks started migrating to Office 2007 and some were still running 2003. Hence MS released the 07 conversion pack for Office 2003. But as far as Word/Excel I never saw a later version having trouble with an older format. MS-Access was most problematic in my experience with conversion.

Guessing it must have been MS-Access where you had problems. Access 97 format was a royal PITA as I recall...

And like Bill my experience with Open Office had a LOT more conversion problems across the board than just the database format. If you are invested in complex office documents (esp sharepoint) I wouldn't make the leap to Open Office.

The office I was working in at the time had been using Word to create camera-ready pages for publication for a decade. Word 97 and Word XP did not render heavily formatted (styles, custom page layouts, tables, embedded images, etc) Word 4.0 & 6.0 documents as created. I understand the problem finally went away in the 2003-2004 timeframe when they converted to LaTeX for creating their page layouts.

It's my understanding that later versions of Excel also had problems properly rendering charts and graphs created in earlier versions.

Access I don't even want to talk about.

Word, Excel, Access and to a small extent Power Point where marginal in opening older versions of their documents in the newer versions.

So if you had a Word 97 Document like what governments make available as form letters Office programs may not open them properly. Sure it was worse when you had lots of complex formatting involved inside the document, things like Tables, Pivot Tables, Templates and so on where where the problems came from.

Even today look at the Forms available for Download from some Government Departments which are now PDF but some of the older ones where Word Perfect then Word and try opening them in Office today. Not so much the Word Perfect Documents as Word never was very good at opening things not in it's native format but the early versions of Word and so on are not compatible with the newer versions of the Office Product.

Actually move more than 2 versions of Office and you'll run into problems opening your older documents.

Col

that Microsoft is on a crusade to annoy its customers.
Rather than to make its products more user-friendly and intuitive, they seem to have a "hoop-jumping " contest for every new release of anything and payment scenarios.
I've purposely purchased equipment with Win 7 just prior to the Win 8 release just to avoid the clumsiness of Win 8. (BTW, Windows 7 is fine)
I've been able to figure out numerous Linux distro's much more quickly than Win 8. It need not be that way.
I don't recall many people terribly excited about the Win 8 interface for PC's (although it's OK for tablets and smartphones), but somehow, MS appears to be uninterested.
It's never a good thing to stop listening to your customers.

i think another big mistake Microsoft is making is moving towards running Xbox on Windows. I already have a PC on which I play games - why do I want an Xbox in addition to my PC? Answer: I don't. And I especially don't want to have to tie a Microsoft Live account to my Xbox just to play. I don't buy the games to subscribe to Microsoft's overbearing overseers - I buy the games to play and have fun. Put too many barriers in the way, and I will stop using your products. Period.

Microsoft - You are following the path of IBM. Remember the business lesson of lock-in: It doesn't work. If you are unwilling to compete on product merit, get out of the business now.

We set up our new xbox and never set up the networking. Works just fine thank you. You do not have to make it connect to a live account, just insert game and play. Nothing in any of the games I play have any need for the internet (we have a ton of games, Skyrim seems the current fav in our house.)

the benefit (if you want to call it that) of hooking up to the Internet is that you get to play with people all over the world. My son does that and has a great time of it. I know, there can be dangers in doing so, but he is careful. Apparently, you don't need or want that aspect of it and that is OK.

So I don't know what this is saying. Yes I did tie it to my live account, but in the process of testing hardware I have had to reload my Windows 8 machine/re-activate it over five times in the last four months. Finally this last time they did have me phone in and use the automated system. When I flagged it was all done on one machine, they immediately activated it. In fact its the same process as when I did this with Windows 7 and Office 2010.

I love Linux as well and have equal amount of desktops running Windows and Linux in our office. If I count servers, I have even more Linux then MS. What your perpetuating here is just plain false.

You can do that as many times as you like. But that doesn't address the situation where your machine dies completely. The Office 2013 license then dies too. It's like OEM software.

Office 2013 *is* effectively OEM software. What Microsoft have does amounts to ceasing to supply the "Full Packaged Product" version of software. This applies to Windows 8 as well as Office 2013.

and installing it on another. See what happens then.