Microsoft posts video of customers criticizing OpenOffice

geeve420 said:

Layback Bear said:

I use neither Office programs. I do wonder why corporation all over the world use Microsoft Office that comes with a healthy price. If a free Office program worked just as well and cost nothing those penny pinching corporation would use the free Office. Microsoft is in the business of creating programs for sale and they sell a lot of them. If I started a new business tomorrow I would choose Microsoft Office. That would allow me to do business with other businesses without jumping through hoops. Most people who would be hired have worked with M/S Office and are trained. Saving a ton of money and time. Loosing one sale or contract do to the translation between Open Office and Microsoft Office would cost many times more than the price of Microsoft Office. It's not worth taking the chance.

I know our company uses MS office simply because it is rolled into the cost of the OS for all the systems, they get a huge discount on it simply because of the shear volume of PC's they have. This was reaon given to me when I asked the head IT guy here. The savings after training on OO plus the price discount on MS Ofiice make it not worth the switch.

It is not just all of that, it really has more to do with compatibility issues as well as robustness.

OO just does not offer what MS Office does in the corporate or small business world.
They can not compete. Not because they are being shut out, but because the product just isn't there to compete. If they put more time and effort into it, maybe.

The compatibility issues are no small thing for people who share many documents in-which they need to edit and send back and forth. OO causes corruption to files.

beauparc said:

I can never understand why Microsoft, having sold sufficient numbers of Office 2010 to recoup their developement costs, don't start selling Office 2007 for a minimal amount. Any money they make is pure profit and using 2007 might well tempt someone into buying the newer version.

Games manufacturers do this all the time. I've just bought the original Assassin's Creed (£5) to see if I liked it. I do and will now go and buy the later version. Multiply my £5 by all the others who have done the same thing and there's the profit.

I fear that Microsoft's reputation for charging as much as possible for their products may well be working against them.

The reason for this is as follows.........

MS are not stopping at the end of development of a single product, such as many Game Devs do.
The ones that have multiple "chapters" are not the same.
They create a product and they sell as many as they can for a short time, they know that at some point, sales of a game are going to drop off because there just isn't that kind of demand for all games, even on the really big selling titles, they only sell a finite number of each release. They make enough off of each of those releases to balance out there long term plans for a series, which is finite. And they are not the ones cutting the price on the product. The sellers/stores are.

MS are developing for a single Product, so yes, they make a lot of profit, but a lot of that profit does in fact go back in the R&D of that line as well as others.

Games, The stores are the ones selling them that cheap to either recoup the costs or just get them off their shelves or out of storage and clear room for the next title.

It is an Apple Juice and Apple Crisp scenario, they may fall under the category of Apples, but they are not the same.