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Microsoft yanks Office 2007 from online store

Locked

I think I told you so a while back this would happen, well….

Microsoft has yanked most versions of Office 2007 from its US online store, after missing its deadline to remove a patented technology from the software.

Visitors to the site looking to purchase the complete Office 2007 suite are currently limited to individual applications, with all other PC and Mac versions accompanied by the message: “this product is currently unavailable while we update versions on our site. We expect it to be available soon.”

– lool as the say:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/images/front_picture_library_PC_Pro/dir_284/it_photo_142102_52.jpg

Topic

And they’re also trying to get an appeal to reduce the

In reply to Microsoft yanks Office 2007 from online store

payout they have to make as well. It all means that they now have to change Office, and put the price up to cover a three hundred million dollar payout and about another hundred million dollars of legal and public relations expenses, plus about fifty thousand dollars of software salaries to effect the changes.

Office 2010

In reply to Microsoft yanks Office 2007 from online store

will be out in the first half of the year, so it probably won’t go back up.

That’s a lot of lost sales.

In reply to Office 2010

Does anyone see this as a serious opportunity for OpenOffice.org and other suites to gain market share?

will kill a chunk

In reply to That’s a lot of lost sales.

of MS’s sales, only problem is Retail stores will still sell the offending versions

Not a chance

In reply to That’s a lot of lost sales.

If the Microsoft Office 2007 Ribbon and accompanying lack of intuitiveness and required multiple mouse clicks failed to boost OpenOffice market share, perhaps nothing would. If one cannot give away iced tea on a sweltering hot day it is time to go back to the think tank.

Wow

In reply to Not a chance

At first I thought that you may be someone bashing OpenOffice. Then I thought to myself….you have a point. All politics and points about windows admins being “afraid” to deploy OO aside…with all the Microsoft Office problems as of late, OO should be doing more to capitalize.

For the record, I’m neutral. I use both. Truth be told, the ribbon interface never bothered me. I have even grown to like it somehow. I do keep a copy of OO on all machines, however. When I was in charge of deploying all the images within my organization, I also made sure OO was there, as well. Even though it was there for free, most people simply didn’t like it even when I personally demonstrated it to them. The only way they would use OO was if I uninstalled Office.

OO and Linux suffer from the same problem – lack of user

In reply to Not a chance

knowledge of their existence. The majority of end users don’t know about them because the average end suer walks into a department store and looks at what’s on the shelf before they make a decision about what to buy – if it’s not visible on the shelf, they don’t even think about. Because they don’t know about, they don’t even consider buying it.

OO is an alternative not a replacement

In reply to That’s a lot of lost sales.

I’ve just tried OO 3.1.1 and am still disappointed with its compatibility with MS Office features beyond simple editing and lack of docx support. My current favorite is SoftMaker, which preserves most of the MS Office oddities including docx. And of course none of them honor the VB extensions and none of them have a true replacement for Outlook.

.docx

In reply to OO is an alternative not a replacement

Isn’t .docx dead with the removal of XML code?

Refuse to even consider it

In reply to That’s a lot of lost sales.

I have been quite happy with the capability of Neo Office so don’t even consider MS Office as a viable candidate any longer. I could get a deal on it when I bought my desktop Mac and decided to pass.

I would like to think that this will give OO and Neo a greater opportunity in the market. I recently recommended OO as the solution of choice to my church as they have been having issues with multiple versions of Office and a need to be able to open documents from any computer in the office.

How do you know

In reply to Office 2010

that the offending technology was not included within the ‘build’ of 2010?

it was, but they started taking it out some months back

In reply to How do you know

when it started to look like they’d lose the case.

I think they’ve already settled that.

In reply to How do you know

The original suit was filed well before O10 development was very far along. MS has already said it won’t be included in O10. You can take that for what it’s worth, but it will certainly be one of the first things checked for.

Still shown as available on TechNet Plus downloads

In reply to Microsoft yanks Office 2007 from online store

Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 and Office 2010 are all shown as “available” on TechNet Plus download website. Are these last three (2003, 2007 and 2010) with or without the offending code?

Only present in 2007.

In reply to Still shown as available on TechNet Plus downloads

XP and 2003 do not have it. If they have 2010 listed for download, be aware it is a ‘beta’ or pre-release version.

TechNet Plus

In reply to Still shown as available on TechNet Plus downloads

I assume they can’t remove if from there as you paid for it / have the licence already. Not a ‘new buy’

MS is not allowed to sell any more copies, but retailers and

In reply to Still shown as available on TechNet Plus downloads

wholesalers can still sell copies and licences which they’ve previously bought from MS. And that’s what you’re seeing – licences previously sold to others still being offered for retail sale.

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