Kingsoft Office - seems quite compatable with Ms Office 2010

Layback Bear said:

From post #3 by Sarris about Kingsoft.

The only thing I did was to disable two phone home scheduled tasks that were installed.

Are you ever sure their is no more calling home. Seem like any program from China call home.

There are two scheduled phone home tasks shown in the task manager. One checks for updates every hour (useless) and the other sends usage stats back to Kingsoft (more useless). I disabled them in the task scheduler without issue. No more phone home.

Insofar as them being a Chinese company, you can't trust anyone anymore, so what is the difference?

As I said in my previous post, it opens and saves in all M$O formats, no issues. All three programs (Writer, Spreadsheets, and Presentations) have been working well for me for a number of years. I won't pay M$ anymore than I need to, and this one fits the bill. Works great, is free.

Regards;

Sarris

jimbo45 said:

sunsetlover said:

I was going to start a thread about Kingsoft Office '13, till I saw this thread. It got a great review on CNET, but there are some mixed reviews by users (a minority to be sure).

The issue these reviewers raised was, in a nutshell, do you trust a Chinese company offering you a free office alternative? Some users mentioned they used Revo to deepscan uninstall.

I'm not inferring anything racist here, it's just that I would tend to share that concern, especially given that I lived in China for 4 years.

I'd love to see more reviews by users here.

Hi there

Decent software by CHINESE companies shouldn't be a problem -- people don't seem to have any problem riding in Trains / Planes made with a lot of CHINESE manufactured components in them -- and Chinese medicine is one of the OLDEST on the planet -- quite frankly I'd rather check into a SHANGHAI hospital any day of the week than most typical public UK Nat. Health one's or a US community hospital in a "dodgy" area.

Most CHINESE I've met are very hard working -- totally different to the portrayal that's often shown on the web - especially by people who have never been to China.

Political differences apart -- and remember you are dealing with a VERY OLD and ancient society for the most part - I wouldn't find any more problems with buying Software from China than anywhere else assuming the business is properly registered -- CHINA actually does have Civil courts too !! so it's not always "Fell off the back of a Truck" type of market.

I'll bet a load of people on this forum use quite happily PAID for DVD copying / cloning software from China without batting an eyelid.

Cheers
jimbo

Can you give us some examples of decent Chinese software, particularly the PAID for DVD copying / cloning software?

I'm very cautious about buying Chinese products because of the high percentage of poor quality products, many of them overpriced cheap quality knockoffs of otherwise good quality products. The company I'm getting my pension from refused to accept any steel manufactured in China because of the frequent poor quality that had been received before the ban, even though the certs that came with the steel had said otherwise. Despite the fact that there are many excellent products coming out of China, Chinese products right now have the same reputation for poor making quality that Japanese products had back in the '50s and '60s.

David that is exactly why I made post #7.

Jimbo45 seems to trust those companies but I suggest strongly not to trust them.
If I have to fight a program just to stop it from doing things I don't want it to do I don't want the program.
Who wants to keep checking and rechecking ect. just to make sure the call home is not working? (Activated)

Who else have read where the Chinese Communist imbed little programs in the hardware they make which infects your system when you install the hardware.

One can trust who one cares to but I think I would find another Office program to use.

Kingsoft would not even be on my list of Office programs to choose from.

I don't depend on a program to tell itself to not phone home if I don't want it to. I use ZoneAlarm's free firewall. It's much easier to use than Win 7's firewall, especially when tailoring it for outgoing transmissions. The first time a program tries to phone home, I get a pop up that gives me a choice of permanently blocking the transmission or just one time only or I can allow it every time or just for the one time only.

Many firewalls will do that. That was not my point.
The point is the Office program shouldn't even be trying to call home when told not to within the Office program itself.

When I turn off auto update in a program I expect it to stay off until I tell it different.
One shouldn't have to set a firewall to block anything that I have already deactivated. Now one has to keep checking the firewall and see if the setting have stayed the same or has the new Office programed changed them also.

I have a problem with programs that do what they want to do and ignore my instructions, especially when it come to security.

Layback Bear said:

...Now one has to keep checking the firewall and see if the setting have stayed the same or has the new Office programed changed them also...

If the firewall is any good, you won't have to do that. I don't have to keep checking ZoneAlarm to make sure it is working correctly. I do spot check once or twice a year and everything has been just fine.

Layback Bear said:

...I have a problem with programs that do what they want to do and ignore my instructions, especially when it come to security.

So do I but, sometimes, you can't always have everything you want so you have to adapt, improvise, whatever. I already have ZoneAlarm's firewall in place so why not take advantage of it?

I'm perfectly satisfied with Office 2010 (I do not like 2013, however) and will use it until shortly—no more than a year—before Win 7 reaches EOL. At that time, if M$ is still putting out the intractable garbage it has been the last couple of years, I will have to seek out another solution, such as one of the flavors of Linux, and KingSoft will be looking mighty attractive if it is still around.

There is a difference between caution and paranoia. One is good and the other is crippling.

Layback Bear said:

When I turn off auto update in a program I expect it to stay off until I tell it different.

I fear you might soon find yourself in a bind.

More and more programs are automating the update process and not even giving users a chance to disable it. And they tout that this is some fantastic feature.

I wont install or update programs to the point where they phone home without my permission, but this is a losing battle as more and more developers move to a silent update/usage reporting process.

And don't even get me going on Steam's new OS...