Time for OpenOffice, LibreOffice and any other Office variant to come in and take M$Office's place then?
I expect not a lot of people will be willing to upgrade to Win10.
Oh, and waiting for Bombasic Bob to make a comment :)
Microsoft has revealed that Office 2019’s desktop applications will only run on Windows 10 – and shortened support for the forthcoming release of the suite. In an update published on February 1st, the company revealed that the beta apps for the perpetual version of Office 2019 – as opposed to the subscription Office 365 - will …
> [64K machines] There's no point trying to poke a ROM.
Eh, had both C64 and Atari 800XL at different points, both had 64K RAM installed and bank switching available between RAM and ROM for the various address spaces. IIRC on both models a poke would write directly to the RAM bank no matter which bank was selected for read at the time. Can't say about models from other manufacturers though.
random poking is fun. or at least amusing. heh.
Unless you own a Commodore Pet and don't mind slagging the display coils.
(I vaguely remember that poking random values into one location could make it try to use a much higher refresh value than the electronis would support and could sometimes blow the display..)
We cannot of course predict disruptive technology. Possibly by then the office desktop PC will be a relic, with just thin clients and server based applications where no-one actually has a office suite installed locally hence no sales. As existing solutions are all browser based, then it won't matter what platform they are on.
"Which is a bit inconsistent with news from the very same announcement that Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2018 will land “in the fall of 2018” and get five years of extended support."
No it isn't. The LTSB is for things like kiosks and appliances and Microsoft specifically state that if you need Office then you shouldn't be using Windows 10 LTSB. You should be using the CBB branch.
Time for OpenOffice, LibreOffice and any other Office variant to come in and take M$Office's place then?
Good luck with that.
I use OpenOffice at home for nearly everything. It works for me and has done for years. Where it won't work, is when some poor schmuck has to support 10,000+ middle managers and secretaries (of all genders) cluelessly trying to use the same short cuts, macros etc that they'd built up over a career of using MS Office. The costs involved in moving are greater than the costs of the perpetual licences, especially when bought in bulk.
Does OpenOffice do everything I need from an office suite? Yes, yes it does. But its not your IT-savvy users that you need to keep moving at the same pace, its the other crowd.
... Boom, it sure is.
I have deployed alternatives to MS Office before, once under the direction of a Head of Faculty who hated MS. So I started with his PA. She hated it, started crying, and threatened to quit. The other times were with PhD students, who ran Linux, and just got on with it. Horses for courses, and all that.
Where it won't work, is when some poor schmuck has to support 10,000+ middle managers and secretaries (of all genders) cluelessly trying to use the same short cuts, macros etc that they'd built up over a career of using MS Office.
If they can't learn to move on and experience new things, they deserve exactly what they get.
One in particular when you upgrade will happily remove the old version and then fail to begin installing the update if you don't have office.
I'm still cursing the fact that they wont provide support for it, if the core is not run on windows server, EVEN knowing it was deployed with the compact version of sqlserver. (I did have a MS Server free site)
The providers state that they will only support their product on Microsoft software that is currently in support.. Actually having it deliberately break if it isn't is rude at best, brown envelopes(err Marketing) at worst
If they can't learn to move on and experience new things, they deserve exactly what they get.
'They' don't get anything. Your business doesn't get profits because your productivity fell off a cliff. Your shareholders don't get dividends. Your share price drops and you don't get your financing rolled over. Your company goes bust.
If they'd always used OpenOffice it wouldn't be a problem, but they haven't. And it is.
Gotta call bullshit on that one. If there's one group ready to call Microsoft's bluff, it's small business owners. Either they turn to old hands like me to maintain legacy computers, often tied to some software package or three, or just plain pissed 'cause they're tired of being pissed on and switch to something else.
No, it's the medium or larger businesses or enterprises that can't afford to get up and leave their investments and human capital behind. Usually, although sometimes they do as well. And their workers have similar set ups at home that their families use as well. There's the lock in. And Microsoft knows it, as do I.
I'm in a separation phase in my relationship with Microsoft. Soon to be a divorce. Between their serial vulnerabilities from all vendors and the Wild West of the Internet turning into CounterStrike, and Microsoft's business moves, I can't take it any more. I've gone to a couple of tablets, one hooked up as a desktop (keyboard, mouse and 30" diplay) that I don't trust and if they get chomped, a factory rest or cheap replacement is simple.
That's where I'm at right now. Everything else lives off in another universe and that's rather a lot else. The hand writing of Microsoft started with them killing Technet subscriptions serial developer abuse, killing their "New Technologies" again and again, Windows 8 and 10, and finally Office 365 subscriptions extending into the corporate world.
Yep, that "New Technologies" is regurgitation of mainframe client-server rentals, right out of IBM's heyday in the '60's and '70's, the MS/AWS/GCP data center serving as the mainframe. Been there, done that, burned the "I'm Stupid" T-shirt. Generally not an option for the Rest of Us. <Waving bye-bye> to this Brave New World.
Ah, but sometimes some of these 'macros' or, shall we say, VBA are very useful in these applications.
I look around at the Excel documents that I use daily and wonder how I would get the job done without VBA at all. It's not just middle managers who use this stuff but people who, well, use the stuff and use it well.
Don't get me wrong. I am not a MS luvvie. I would happily ditch everything MS tomorrow if I could, if only someone were to port all my Visual Studio code, all of my Office stuff and everything Microsofty to something else. Truly I would, and I speak as a coder who has been suffering since the first days of Visual Basic.
But I accept that I am locked in and it's quicker for me to await personal retirement (I don't work for anyone else but make money from the various markets) than to recode everything. But that's not my point is: the point is that it's not all middle managers who use VBA. They have other ways to make your life hell.
I agree with BongoJoe, and AC above him seems a little removed from reality, to be polite.
I work in a mixed architecture, with Linux developers, who use VIM for coding and spend 90% of their time on the command line, we also have web developers, they work either on a Linux terminal server or Linux laptops (ThinkPad T series).
Half of the front-office staff use Linux, the other half Windows. Even the directors of the company are split 50-50 for their desktop.
We do have some Windows virtual machines around for testing, but the majority of servers are Linux based (Debian and Gentoo). I used Linux as a replacement for Windows back in the dreadful XP days, coming back to using Windows with 7 through 10. But I always kept a Windows XP PC around when I was working on Linux and I always kept Linux boxes around when working on Windows.
The Linux guys tend to poo-poo Windows and vice-versa. I tent to use the best solution for the job at hand. That means, generally, a lot of Windows on the front end and a good mix of Linux and Windows on the back end.
But Open Source software that is good, stable and relatively secure is as hard to find as it is with proprietary software on the Windows side. No program is perfect, they all have bugs and glaring security holes waiting to be unearthed.
Linux is good at patching, Windows is getting slowly better (at least you only need to install one update when you get a new Windows 10 PC, not the thousands of updates that can take days to install on a Windows 7 installed (thank God for WSUS-Offline, I rolled that out at my last job and we saved around 14 hours for a Windows 7 installation on new hardware - I also brought in imaging of the then finished standard installations, which meant a PC was ready to roll in about an hour).
Linux problem (and open source for other platforms as well) starts when you break outside of the pre-included packages that are in the official repositiroies. You have to start with tarballs and zip packages, okay, not too bad, but they can't check all dependencies, so you have to rely on the documentation, you start unpacking the tarball and run the installation script, which keels over with a cryptic error message that nobody has documented. The message is cryptic, but seems to point at a missing file.
A quick search of the web brings up a couple of forum posts for other packages which kick up the same error, the half of which are just single posts with people having this problem and no answer. A post for your package with this error doesn't exist. If you are lucky, you can work out what file is missing, so you hunt through the tarball and yes, it isn't there. You go through the distribution documentation, hoping to find which package it is in, only to find that the file has been depricated and hasn't been included in the last two releases of the OS, which either means no developer has touched the project you are trying to install for at least 18 months, or they is still developing against old versions of the operating system... Or they developed against a different distribution, where files and directories are in different locations, so you have to go though dozens of scripts adjusting paths and command names, re-writing configuration files.
Don't get me wrong I really like Linux and I like the concepts of open source software, but there are so many broken, poorly documented projects out there, that it is just cheaper to buy a Windows server and a proprietary package, because you spend less time trying to get it work, that the licenses for the software are cheaper than the time you have to spend researching the broken bits of the open source solution.
Often a mixture works great, I have used a lot of Linux mail gateways feeding into an Exchange server, for example. There are a lot of open source teamware products out there, but if you are using Windows and Office on the clients, Exchange is quick to deploy and easy to administer, compared to many of the open source alternatives.
LibreOffice also into a different category, if you are dealing purely with internal documents and don't need the collaboration tools provided by GSuite or MS Office, it is a great solution. If you need to exchange documents with other companies on a regular basis, who do not use LibreOffice, it can be a disaster - page breaks in the wrong place and a few formatting errors are the least of your problems; presentations are still the worst, I've had presentations turn up and halfway through the slides, I start noticing that the arrows linking different parts of processes are sitting in mid air (commical) or pointing in completely the wrong direction or to the wrong destination!
Windows 7 goes EOL in 2020 so most businesses that are wedded to the Office suite, and these are the vast majority of the customers, will probably moving to Windows 10 anyway. It's also not uncommon for companies to skip Office releases because document compatability is pretty good. One of my customers is still "happily" (the ribbon interface disqualifies the use of the word in the normal sense) using Office 2011 and I've seen no plans for a move to 2016 but Windows 10 migrations are planned for this year.
I like OpenOffice and use it for the majority of my own stuff but it's plumage is starting to suffer. Every time I try LibreOffice I get exasperated by the degraded UI and the odd bugs which invariably lead to crashes and data loss. It's a pity because there are some talentend and committed working on it but the project management is just shocking.
MS has worked hard on Office 2016 and even harder on the mobile versions. Good luck to them if they can find customers who are happy to pay for them even if it will become harder to convince people that there is any kind of innovation going on.
The other thing is, if you are reticent about going to Windows 10, then you are probably reticent about going to newer versions of Office as well.
Mix that in with no more hardware support from Intel for Windows 7 on the last couple of generations of chips, it will be increasingly hard to get new hardware that will run Windows 7.
Also, as some point there has to be a cut-off or new operating system features can't be taken advantage of. Ms get criticized because their own software doesn't take advantage of new OS features, then, when they finally start to make moves to take advantage of new OS features, they are criticized for abandoning older platforms... They are damned if the do and damned if they don't.
Maybe if Microsoft put in a "stop fucking spying on me, you lousy git" button, people would be more inclined to adopt it. At least with Windows 7 I can murder the bloody call home with a hosts file. In Windows 10, they hard coded the bastard in so that even this doesn't work.
Fuck Microsoft. Fuck them with Lennart Pottering.
As opposed to open source, where you follow the instructions to bend over, but suddenly find that the rest of the documentation is missing or wrong...
Yes, I'm cynical after a week of trying to install 5 different open source services, none of which are properly documented and none of which worked, even after hours of scouring the web for solutions... In fact 2 of them didn't work, because key libraries were depricated 2 years ago, but nobody bothered to update the documentation to say this or discuss how you can work around the problems.
Finally found one product that does "just work", Zimbra. So, from 6 products to evaluate, we managed to find 1 that works... Makes the evaluation report easy. :-D
A handful of us - Penguinheads, Open/LibreOffice users, G-Suite fans, etc. - have been more-or-less saying this since, well, virtually forever. And we're right. Unfortunately, truckloads of people who are sold and use MSEverything make our pleas all but unheard. Might as well try to sell Trump on climate change being real and that we can slow it down.
While we can damn (not dam) the mainstream for its following the path of least resistance and taking the road more traveled, in the end, we just feel superior to them and they are oblivious to it.
Once upon a time, I was wailing along with the NO HTML! email crowd - HUGE FILES! SECURITY RISK! - but when myself and about six other people were still clinging to plain text, I finally caved and allowed my own self all those nice text styles and formatting.
Not every battle goes the way we want it to.
" their time is up if they want access to Microsoft’s productivity innovations."
Funny how my Office 2010 on Win 7 does everything I need it to do. I've written six novels, several dozen corporate documents and no one has ever thrown them back in my face laughing hysterically.
MS is a corporation and needs to make more money this year than last year or people get fired. Enter shorter support cycles. At least they support Office longer then Apple does the iPhone, but one day they will be the same. There's money to be made.
On 32 bit on a tablet with keyboard dock/hinge cover. Also a desktop PC. So I can shudder when Linux or Win7 really annoys me.
Seriously poor compared with XP and Win7 and Linux Mint with Mate. I've also found that since 2003 the versions of MS Office have got worse. It's worth figuring out how to do styles properly in LibreOffice Writer and graphs in LibreOffice Calc. Also disable Java and change all the defaults. Like you ought to do on any package (in MS Office I disable Macros and VBA, both evil).
LibreOffice is really good nowadays, as is GoogleDocs.
Contrary to that is M$ Office which is on steady decline in usability and stability ever since Office 2010. Office 2013 and 2016 are a big pile of ugly as hell unstable crap.
Office 97 was already feature-complete, almost nothing new got introduced with 2000, 2003 and 2007 only brought the instant-preview and the new toolbar. With the new toolbar people just found out about many former not so well known features, that had been introduced back with 95 and 97, and thought it was something new.
Without the big budget global bribery in public sector, schools and big co, M$ Office usage would fall off dramatically within years.
It's such a shame that ContentEditable, the inbuilt WYSIWYG HTML editor, in the HTML4/5 spec has never been improved. I blame it to M$, Google and Apple, the browser cartel, they actively prevent web competition by not fixing years old well known ContentEditable "bugs". Otherwise, GoogleDocs, Office365WordWeb, iCloudPages would be dead products in the water, as everyone could just use the ContentEditable.
"Windows 10 adoption was sitting at 60% at June last year. So I guess, most people have already upgraded."
Suspect that most people who were going to upgrade, did so some while back - probably before 1Q2017 when the rate of Win10 adoption markedly slowed, everyone else simply waited until they purchased new equipment with Win10 pre-installed - hence more of a replacement than an upgrade.
What is interesting is that given that you can only buy equipment with Win10 preinstalled now, there must be a significant number of organisations downgrading systems to Win7, which would also contribute to the slow down in Win10 adoption.
Yeh... I went there too. I assume that the author of the headline was a little too excited to take a stab at Microsoft to bother checking whether what he/she wrote made sense.
I'm pretty sure that the article is only referencing users running the Windows platform. Mac, Android, iOS and whatever else will likely remain as is.
Who is this going to affect in the near term? Most home users I know are happy running an older version of Office. Microsoft talks about the "pace of change accelerating", but the features most home users care about are fairly static. I know more than a few people who still run Office 2003.
Business users might care more for the new collaboration tools in recent versions of Office, and therefore a greater need to be current, but they tend to be on a different lifecycle model than your typical home user. When my Thinkpad gets replaced every few years, I get a new version of Windows and Office.
You're ignoring 5he cost of engaging a Microsoft Partner or three to get it working properly, integrated to your business processes, and care and proper feeding to keep it that way despite every change makes to both Office 365 and, more specifically, Sharepoint and SQL. Exactly the same situation for Exchange although the backing store is different if I recall correctly. I''m a master-class mage but I don't touch it. That's Goddess level.
"You're ignoring the cost of engaging a Microsoft Partner or three to get it working properly"
It works out of the box. Took us 1 internal guy working for few weeks that had very basic website creation experience to get it all up and running for several thousand users and multiple departments.
"integrated to your business processes,"
Again - workflow is easy to setup and manage.
"proper feeding to keep it that way despite every change makes to both Office 365 and, more specifically, Sharepoint and SQL." ... "Exactly the same situation for Exchange although the backing store is different"
In several years of using O365 I have yet to experience such a change that required us to actually do anything. It just works.
You think so because you never tried to explain to Office users how to use a VCS to manage documents - they can't grasp it (the lack of good GUI tools for most VCS doesn't help, unluckily).
Actually, recently we collaborated with another dev group inside the company, at another site. We asked them to create a branch for our code, so they could promote it on their own branch as they saw fit.
The answer was that they didn't want to make things more complex using such features... they commit everything on the trunk and nothing more...
This post has been deleted by its author
Shoot self in the leg.
No, better make that both legs.
Companies will start to see the financial impact of remaining in your locked enclave and begin to question it. Once they do, for a good many of them, the writing is on the wall and it does not include MS as a long term supplier of goods and services.
Apart from [cough, cough] support for 99.999999% of businesses, what it the compelling reason to stump up for the new version of Office? Does it have some new must have feature that every business needs today and not tomorrow?
Probably not.
I'm currently engaged in a small project to get a 100 person engineering company off of MS stuff entirely. For the money saved in licensing over 5 years, they could employ between 2 and 3 more people.
come the end of the year, they will say bon-voyage to MS for good apart from a few machine tools but they never get connected to anything else so there is no issue. Half of the back Office Team are already using Libre Office instead of MS Office. The rest will move in a couple of months.
For what can't be ported to Linux, they will use a Cloud Service. Everything else will be Open Source.
How much is my time costing them? Well, I spend 2 or 3 days a week on it and as I'm retired, I'm charging enough so that I don't hit higher rate tax. That good enough?
Shoot self in the leg.
No, better make that both legs.
Far be it from me to speak on Microsoft's behalf, but perhaps they just figured anyone still on MSWin7 by then is either finishing up a migration, or simply not interested in migrating at all. And anyone in the second group isn't likely to be rushing out to get a newer MSOffice version either. So they're effectively cutting off a customer base that's not likely to buy newer product (from MS at least) anyway. Some may be insistently hanging onto old kit, others may have joyously made the L&L Upgrade (Linux & LibreOffice)
"Companies will start to see the financial impact of remaining in your locked enclave and begin to question it."
And then will look at how much vastly more it cost say Munich to run OSS than it did Windows and how shoddy a solution that extra cost delivered. And will stay with Microsoft. Which is already what pretty much everyone is doing.
To me, that implies that they had several senior people who were determined that the project should fail and were willing to sabotage it from within.
If people can recognise corruption and conspiracy in the corporate world, it's not hard to recognise it in geopolitics and wider society. Some conspiracies are fabricated to serve as grist for accusing "tin foil hatters", but they're a distraction from real wide ranging conspiracies in plain sight. If conspirators are seldom brought to justice, this shows the power structure is corrupt, and it has been for a very long time.
"Especially when you consider that the French Gendarmerie managed to do that for all of their systems throughout France without any real problems."
Actually they only did that for web browsing kiosks for the front line cops to complete forms and use email. The project is complete and they still have 12,000 PCs using Windows for running their business applications.
>>Companies will start to see the financial impact of remaining in your locked enclave and begin to question it.
Companies are always doing that. If there were a better and or cheaper solution than Office + Windows companies would be using it. Better mousetrap, etc.
Experiments with alternatives such has Munich have been expensive failures and other well known attempts such as the French Police have failed to replace desktops running line of business applications. They still have well over 10,000 Windows PCs for that.
>>>For the money saved in licensing over 5 years, they could employ between 2 and 3 more people.
What money saved in licensing?! - you said they already have MS stuff. If unsupported OSS software is OK, then presumably unsupported Microsoft software is OK. Seems to be a false analogy.
"For what can't be ported to Linux, they will use a Cloud Service"
At a cost presumably.
"Well, I spend 2 or 3 days a week on it and as I'm retired, I'm charging enough"
So more cost that would not be incurred if they kept what they had.
I will probably move to Linux. I have finally found an alternative to Lightroom and Photoshop (darktable). That was the last sticking point to staying on Windows. Besides, I don't think my laptop will last much longer, I've had it for 7 years already! I will be moving onto Linux.
WINE is currently on my most hated list of Linux software. I have version 1.6.2 installed on Mint, and wanted to upgrade the shiny new version, in the hope that I could get some more software I use on Windows running on Linux.
According to the WINE home page, I had to uninstall the old version first. Fair enough... except the bastard won't uninstall.
I first tried it using the Software Manager, and it seemed to work. Until I then came to install the new version, following the instructions on its home page. I forget the exact error, but the upshot is that it won't install because, apparently, I still have 1.6.2 installed.
Except I haven't if I try to use it - nothing that ran under WINE now runs under WINE.
Except I have if I try to install a new version.
Except I haven't if I try to uninstall it again.
Except I have if I type wine --version
Except I haven't if I try to use it... etc.
Head -> Desk.
Dude;
use this from the console as root to get rid of your wine version:
dpkg --purge $(dpkg -l | awk '/^ii\s+wine/ {print $2}')
Then use the instructions on this page: https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu to install the official stable version from winehq.
For experimental versions use wine-staging. (google is your friend)
@John Sanders
Ta - that line does appear to have done the trick. Wine 1.6.2 is no more.
The instructions on that page are what I was going to follow to install the new wine - but I didn't get beyond uninstalling the old one. Now I have:
vinceh@Deimos wine --version
wine-3.0
If we ever meet, I owe you a pint.
Registry changes are WAY more dangerous than running a somewhat cryptic command line in an unusual case using LINUX.
Even if a Windows user finds someone who can explain what registry entries to change the procedure can quite easily end in tears.
Most LINUX admin tasks can be done using a GUI that most users can understand - I can't say that for Windows, especially Windows 10 that usually has problems after an "upgrade"
"Registry changes are WAY more dangerous than running a somewhat cryptic command line in an unusual case using LINUX."
No - Registry changes are safer for several reasons. You have per key ACLs and auditing, you have atomic transaction commits with rollback and snapshot capability and above all it's a single interface, a single location and a standard format for all configuration data. Windows stopped using crappy solutions like INI files many years ago - Linux has yet to catch up.
Windows stopped using crappy solutions like INI files many years ago - Linux has yet to catch up.
Oh, sure, the registry is MUCH better than easily editable (and copyable) text files. If only Firefox scattered its prefs throughout the registry instead of having them all in one place where I can easily back them up or copy them even between operating systems (as I did when I migrated to Linux and just copied over my profiles, with a few edits to change paths in the easily-editable text files). Couldn't have done that with a MS monstrosity like IE, even if there was a Linux version (thankfully, there isn't).
If Linux ever catches up, Red Hat and Lennart Poettering will probably be to blame, and it won't be a good thing by any means. The registry is one of the worst design features of Windows... let's not copy that, please.
You have per key ACLs and auditing, you have atomic transaction commits with rollback and snapshot capability and above all it's a single interface, a single location and a standard format for all configuration data. Windows stopped using crappy solutions like INI files many years ago - Linux has yet to catch up.
The registry was a Windows 3.1 solution to there being no defined hierarchy of directories to hold application settings, so it had to be centralised because otherwise developers would put files anywhere and nothing could stop them (unlike UNIX).
Registry keys are equivalent to files, which can also have ACLs and auditing. Most configuration files are stored in the user's home directory meaning the settings are private to that user without doing anything.
In UNIX if you want to copy a program across from one comouter to another it's easy to install the same program from the repository and copy the configuration file/directory across. Try that in Windows.
Commit and rollback are necessary because it's centralised, and that still isn't good enough as registry corruption and registry cleaners are things in Windows.
If there is a corrupt configuration file in UNIX you just wipe it or restore from backup and carry on with your day. Try the same on a Windows machine with a hosed registry.
Finally the registry is legacy. MS now recommends %APPDATA% is used for desktop software settings and it isn't used in TIFKAM app settings.
"Registry keys are equivalent to files,"
No, registry keys are almost always at a way more granular level than configuration files in Linux.
"Try the same on a Windows machine with a hosed registry."
Cant remember then last time I saw one. Must be a decade ago. But if that happens you just boot to the "last know on good configuration" or a system restore point.
"MS now recommends %APPDATA% is used for desktop software settings "
No, they recommend that for data that must or you choose to store as files. There is no recommendation not to use the registry.
"and it isn't used in TIFKAM app settings."
Because .Net apps can be multiplatform.
No, registry keys are almost always at a way more granular level than configuration files in Linux.
No, because a key holds a collection of value-data pairs, similar to a configuration file holding a collection of settings.
But if that happens you just boot to the "last know on good configuration" or a system restore point.
Which was disabled from Windows 8 onwards. You need to set a registry key to enable it again. Difficult if the problem is due to the registry being hosed.
No, they recommend that for data that must or you choose to store as files. There is no recommendation not to use the registry.
So on the one hand we have, "if you want, go ahead and use files", and on the other we have Registry Junk: A Windows Fact of Life and finally the future (UWP) does not use it. Not difficult to work out what MS' advice really is.
Because .Net apps can be multiplatform.
UWP apps are multiplatform but mobile is dead so it's multiplatform with one platform.
"Registry keys are equivalent to files, which can also have ACLs and auditing"
Nope - Registry keys are much lower level than a config file in Linux. And you don't get such auditing in Linux without a version control system.
"Most configuration files are stored in the user's home directory meaning the settings are private to that user without doing anything."
Nope - not private - you can't block root accessing anything on a Linux filesystem.
"MS now recommends %APPDATA% is used for desktop software settings and it isn't used in TIFKAM app settings."
MS always gave you the choice for software. Almost all OS configuration is in the Registry and all the advantages above apply. Also it's much faster to parse and far more scalable than text files.
Nope - Registry keys are much lower level than a config file in Linux. And you don't get such auditing in Linux without a version control system.
In registry nomenclature, a key contains value-data pairs. In everybody else's nomenclature, a configuration file usually contains key-value pairs. How are they not equivalent?
Nope - not private - you can't block root accessing anything on a Linux filesystem.
SELinux.
Almost all OS configuration is in the Registry and all the advantages above apply. Also it's much faster to parse and far more scalable than text files.
[Citation needed]
A configuration file, even on Windows, can be text, binary, whatever the program developer needs.
"In registry nomenclature, a key contains value-data pairs. In everybody else's nomenclature, a configuration file usually contains key-value pairs. How are they not equivalent?"
In one, you have a defined format that is application indepedent. In the other the parsing of that config file is a per-application thing, and may have quirks on a per-application basis. What exactly is the file format? Is it picky about line endings, character encoding, trailing spaces, spaces around the key:value separator, etc, etc. Does it have metadata elsewhere in the file that lists, e.g. the number of key:value pairs, or a heirarchical structure, that needs to be updated or understood by whatever it is that you're using to tweak one single value? Is the entire file in use when you want to tweak one value in it?
With the registry, a dword is a dword, and tweaking one single value is utterly trivial.
>This is why the average user (ie 95% of people on this planet) will never use Linux.
until it has a decent system configuration UI for the control panel apps.
What is troubling with this announcement from MS, is the seeming lack of real progress towards a mass market version of Linux et al. It is clear that with this announcement and from the comments here, Windows 7 end of life in 2020 is THE major opportunity for the mass migration of desktops (enterprise and consumer) away from Windows; miss this and it's uncertain as to when the next big opportunity will be...
"This is why the average user (ie 95% of people on this planet) will never use Linux."
see icon.
keep in mind that linux help, online, is not only free [as a general rule], it's usually accompanied by people who are willing to hand-hold you through the process if you're a n00b. Even on IRC. ok SOME usenet channels are filled with trolls and people looking to make their own male members look larger at YOUR expense, but in general I've found the linux help forums and IRC channels to be not only helpful and friendly, but gregarious, philanthropic, and very generous with the time needed to help a n00b.
Yeah, it's MUCH better than talking with some boiler-plate idiot tech in a call center that you actually PAID for in the product price... or the bureaucracy you have to naviguess through in order to get something you're entitled to according to the license/whatever.
"keep in mind that linux help, online, is not only free [as a general rule], it's usually accompanied by people who are willing to hand-hold you through the process if you're a n00b."
Now YOU keep in mind. The Linux community's definition of a noob and the general public's definition of a noob can differ significantly, and this has an effect on the target market.
The Linux community generally expects you to be able to type things and know the difference between a taskbar and a scrollbar.
Meanwhile, in the real world, you have people who hold their mice upside-down--or think it's an accelerator pedal--and still expect to get things done. These are the kinds of people Microsoft have to cater. And no, it's not considered the norm yet to type and print a letter on a tablet.
Think it over.
My Samsung AIO laser printer prints just fine from a tablet or anything else for that matter. Absolute worst case need the Samsung app, drivers are a non-issue, that's covered. It's why I selected it. True, most people don't research that but that'll change. I've already seen some who go through serial buy and return cycles until they get one that's "Just Right."
Strange that I have found so many people who have trouble using Windows - especially Windows 8 & 10 when the UI changed so much.
Yet some of those people who opted to change to Ubuntu MATE from XP have no trouble at all?
The fallacy that Linux has no GUI tools and is all command line is just male bovine excrement spread around by (mainly) Windows bigots (who have probably never put in a fraction of the effort learning the Windows way than they did when trying Linux - if they ever did).
That kind of thing isn't normally required. When I removed Wine 2.1 to replace it with 3.0, it went just as easily as it would have in Windows. Windows has its moments when you have to use Powershell or CMD to do things too... there's no UI for DISM, among others. Compared to the never-ending crap-fest of Windows 10, Mint is certainly the saner choice.
Well you say that but for me Linux has never lunched its registry, slowed to a crawl because it wants to update even thought I've told it not to (Windows 10), succumbed to viruses or malware, forced a reboot when I'm in the middle of something or just decided, for no very good reason, to stop working.
Most people these days don't install anything much beyond games once initial setup is done. My dad and my uncle both moved from XP to Mint Mate. I no longer get support calls and they're both very happy.
As far as I can see gaming and what machines are sold with are the only things holding Linux back in the home. If you want an appliance PC Mint is a much better choice than Win10.
Probably it works, but the question is how well it works? For example, there are issue with color calibration when using WINE? I mean, how well WINE APIs for color management work well with the Linux color management stack?
Another issue are printer drivers - if you need to print other color management needs enter the field - while you can usually trust the original drivers and profiles, not all printers makers release Linux drivers. When some features are handled by the driver (i.e.some B/W printing features in Canon and Epson printers, or Chroma Optimizer in Canon Pixma Pro/ImagePROGRAF printers), and some features may need printer specific applications. Wasting expensive A2 sheets it's pretty annoying.
In these situations, switching to Apple is a safer approach.
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After reading the Windows 10 EULA, there was no way I was going to run it.
Other reasons too, but yeah. This.
I'm a little surprised though. I figured by now a fair number of people would have sued any company/agency/entity that uses a Win10 box to store their sensitive data. Given that EULA, it's essentially a security breach to accept it.
" I figured by now a fair number of people would have sued any company/agency/entity that uses a Win10 box to store their sensitive data. Given that EULA, it's essentially a security breach to accept it."
Corporate / enterprise versions of Windows 10 don't have the same telemetry.
Besides, I don't think my laptop will last much longer, I've had it for 7 years already! I will be moving onto Linux.
I would be pretty disappointed in a laptop that only lasted 7 years. I have a 12 year old one (HP/Compaq) and a 9 year old one (Asus) that still work fine; the latter one is still one of my primary PCs. The HP/Compaq is too limited by hardware obsolescence for that, but even underpowered hardware can have niche uses.
Planned obsolescence can go take a long walk off a short pier. Oh, and so can Windows 10... that's on my list of possible OS choices right after "don't choose any; stop using computing devices altogether." I won't be doing that, but if it was a choice between that or Windows 10, I guess I could rediscover paper books and what not.
>>"I would be pretty disappointed in a laptop that only lasted 7 years. I have a 12 year old one (HP/Compaq) and a 9 year old one (Asus) that still work fine"
Agreed, nothing a few upgrades won't generally fix. My main laptop is a Lenovo X201 from 2010 (last good laptop Lenovo made IMO). Popped an SSD in it, upped the RAM to 8GB and it still runs very speedily indeed - plenty fast enough for everything I throw at it. The battery life was getting a bit poor though, so I bought a new one for it and I'm back up to around 8 hours off a single charge. The old girl still has plenty of life left in her (and remains resolutely free of Windows 10, like all my computing products apart from one Windows 10 test laptop I keep laying around).
I recently found a laptop so old that it has only 384MB RAM - after some scratching around I discovered ANTIX which turned this geriatric device into a usable device again!
The biggest issue I have found with reviving PCs and laptops by installing LINUX is that those users that give credence to the forecasts of doom by Windows bigots find fault (even though the evidence that they are better of is ignored)
But not necessarily all free of security concerns
Show me something you believe is. And then prove it.
More to the point, given that we know that practically everything is broken - including the CPUs themselves - what is the supposed security benefit from throwing away stuff that's had its known bugs mostly fixed and replacing it with new stuff full of new bugs that are yet to be found?
Sounds like something written by Facebook! Honestly, do all corporate PR heads attend the same PR cult??? Hope you enjoyed writing this corporate drivel Simon, as its reads like a Microsoft press release, and should say sponsored! Long live LibreOffice! Can M$ Office even export to PDF or open Android SMS databases out of the box? BTW: Death to the ribbon!
From which you'd have to lever my Office 10* ( with LibreOffice in my other hand of course).
Why would most/any uses need anything more, anyway? It's an Office programme - Word processor, Spreadsheet, DTP, database,( and the VB support for the complicated stuff). That's all it is. And for most people Word for DOS had just about as much functionality as they ever needed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Though leaving Office 2003 might have been a mistake
From my personal perspective as someone who's recently started work somewhere using 32-bit Office 2010, I am praying for the day that an upgrade gets pushed my way. My biggest issue is that I spend much of my time being a spreadsheet jockey and it's such a bloody faff to have all of the open documents in the same window. Yes, I know you can launch separate instances of the Excel but the instances don't talk to each other nicely.
There are other small but significant improvements in the functionality besides that so I was very happy to find a way to get a Citrix delivered version of Excel 2016 which is 64-bit, sits on a server with a bit more oomph and RAM than my laptop and enables me to do things which would otherwise be possible but harder and significantly slower.
The only reason MS recommend you stick with Office 32-bit is that there are too many third-party gizmos that only exist in 32-bit form. They won't work in the 64-bit version. If you aren't using any of those, it has been OK to use the 64-bit version for at least 10 years. Conversely, if you are then you will be stuck with 32-bit Office in 2019 as well.
On the other hand, *most* people's documents are under 1GB.
By reducing support lifecycles, we hope to return to our old ways.
Same is true of the insistence that it will only work on Windows 10. I thought that with the "new" Microsoft, the best of what MS applications had to offer was no longer going to be reserved for Microsoft's pet platform?
Seriously, Microsoft, I am beginning to think that if you pound any more nails into that coffin, the wood is going to split.
>Same is true of the insistence that it will only work on Windows 10.
But remember by Windows 10 MS are not referring to what they released in 2015, but a more recent build, which will naturally change over time, yet MS will still hand wave and claim stuff works on Windows 10.
I did initially misread the release, but thinking about it, perhaps I didn't: Is this the first step to having Office only run on enterprise editions of Windows 10, with consumer versions it's O365 or third-party.
After Office 2000 - which has rather more features than I need - became increasingly unstable on Windows 7 (Word will no longer print and Excel will no longer quit), I moved to LibreOffice and it seems to work well enough.
If you have extremely long and complex documents or incredibly intricate spreadsheets, it may not, but you really need to think seriously whether an office suite is the best solution for data that probably needs rather more in the way of revision control and audtability.
" I moved to LibreOffice and it seems to work well enough."
I did that (on my winders boxen) when a bug in Office '97 prevented MS Excess from working, and the "fix" prevented Word from printing. [I wonder if this is the same as YOUR win7 bug].
Open Office and Libre Office both work fine on every platform I've tried them on. I do miss _some_ features that were in MS Excess '97, though. but because of the 1G RAM bug from Office '97 I stopped even considering it...
(office '97 was the version that introduced "clippy", but read the formats that a customer decided EVERY document needed to be saved in, the only reason I 'upgraded' from Office '95, and subsequently REFUSED to go through that cycle AGAIN)
Yes, it looks some sort of desperation -" we couldn't move enough people to Windows 10 using the free bait, so we have to find other ways" (maybe without slurping you would have achieved better results).
This would be the first version of Office to run only on a single Windows version in many years. Anyway, the "mobes approach" on PC won't work. But "monodimensional leaders" like Nadella can't really look at the big picture, only at the narrow self-imagined world their little brain can understand.
He's just inviting more and more people to abandon Windows for alternatives. He should have understood that where alternatives become good enough, Windows can't dominate - and many are already used to a non Windows world.
Alienating actual customers just because they didn't drink the last kool-aid may have a bitter price in the future.
"maybe without slurping you would have achieved better results"
If it weren't for the data gouging, I'd have moved up to Windows 10 by now. I'd have done my level best to murder Cortana back down to something manageable, but otherwise, it seems like an OS update I could live with. As it actually stands, though, I have zero interest in Spyware-as-an-OS.
"Are my eyes deceiving me, or are you actually advocating that people should move to Win10?"
Well it's faster and more secure than Windows 7. And if you use a corporate version has no slurp. And if you don't then it's easy to disable the slurp in recent builds.
It's already way more popular than Windows 10 in markets where there are lots of technically astute people - such as Steam gamers for instance.
It's already way more popular than Windows 10 in markets where there are lots of technically astute people - such as Steam gamers for instance.
I presume you mean it's more popular than Windows 7, as saying that 10 is more popular than 10 makes no sense. But yes, the Steam hardware survey... 56.69% Win 7 x64, Win 10 x64 35.40%, top two as of January 2018.
"...was the fastest roll out of any OS ever."
Yes, because it also the first to be force-installed upon a huge user base.
"So I doubt they are worried."
Windows now sees the lowest marketshare of end-user computing it has had in two decades, and that trend isn't slowing. I don't think they are not worried either.
"Alienating actual customers just because they didn't drink the last kool-aid may have a bitter price in the future."
alienated customers aren't the ones they're after. I think they're trying to lock-in the millenials... [the only customer base they even have a REMOTE chance of having any time in the future]. But I would say that most of the people that read El Reg would agree that Micro-shaft totally went the wrong way with Win-10-nic, and putting lipstick on the boar (not the oinky end) and THEN greasing up Office 2019 and jaming it up our as... down our throats isn't helping them win new customers, or even keep existing ones.
/me continuing to work on an IDE and dev kit that _could_ help make writing X11-based [and compatibility for WIN32] applications a WHOLE lot easier... and when I tested a proof of concept last week, I typed in the program name in a shell, with a glob for 50-something files as the argument, and it opened all of them in under a second [I even captured a cool video of it from the desktop using vlc] and displayed the main window like "pop" - the way applications SHOULD start up, not taking 10's of seconds of wait cursor just to put a splash screen up, and then 10's more to get the IDE to display, and then a boatload of additional time loading each file, etc.. Yeah. Under 1 second, 50-something text files, with a tabbed multi-doc editing main window and the first doc [a C source file 2000+ lines] right there. The point is that it' POSSIBLE to write applications like this, if you don't do it "the Micro-shaft Way" and do it on a system that has X11 like Linux or FreeBSD. I'll just have to make sure that the toolkit works seamlessly on WIN32 also, and write some C++ foundation classes, and voila! but yeah I've been working on this for YEARS now. I'll need to finish before 2020 or it will be pointless when Win 7 support dies off and it's not done yet...
to me its you
face facts
wouldn't matter what the hell Microsoft did - in these forums the penguins would be all over it
I use Windows, macOS, and Linux and I don't discriminate, I hate them all equally. Perhaps MS could pull the plug on the slurping. Until then, it's Windows 7 for me.
“As the pace of change accelerates, it has become imperative to move our software to a more modern cadence.”
It's like we are really in a monetary bubble and the consumer is being hunted like fox by a pack of dogs who want to "accelerate" his cadence.
Is there no "barf" icon? Oh well.
The fourth derivative of the state is positive! I have not hear that used before. You made my day!
How many people wont realise that your talking about an ever increasing quantity of jerk!
LOL!
A beer for you!
Thanks to all those taking the time to tell us that they're using or moving to Open/Libre Office.
Perhaps you can come and help us Windows morons in the corporate world migrate our estates to FOSS. Given the savings you could confidently predict, I'm sure you could command a princely salary!
"...I've used LibreOffice for years. If my colleagues have a problem with the files I send them, it's their problem, not mine..."
What a frankly shitty attitude.
I bet they love the extra work you cause them just so you can sit in your ivory tower radiating smugness at them.
Back in the real corporate world, you wouldn't get within a mile of any of my teams. We're busy enough without needing another layer of complexity and stupidity making our lives more difficult. Frankly I wouldn't / won't tolerate such diva behaviour. Use whatever product you want, but with that approach it wouldn't be working with or for me.
yeah Tony, but its OK for M$ and the corporate PHBs to waste the time of millions just trying to do their jobs when the user interface of a spreadsheet becomes a beeping desktop publishing nightmare that has cells FCOL. Just built a couple of Win8.1 boxes (because I had legit licences) and it was not hard to use ClassicShell to make them appear like Win XP or Win 7 so the non-IT volunteer users could just use them. Not a hope with Win 10 and current M$ products.
Personally I like KingSoft because one can choose the newer abomination interface or something close to traditional and get to work. Mind you, OfficeLibre 6 does look promising.
"By all means bash them for the stuff they do. Not the stuff you didn't like over a decade ago."
Wouldn't mind that
its the bashing them no matter what they do I find tedious
other month they introduced new accessibility features, they got slated on here and not by anyone who uses or needs accessibility features - just whining penguins....
Wait..... !!!!! Hmmmm, might have answered an unasked question there
its the bashing them no matter what they do I find tedious
Thing is, for many of us, it's not bashing no matter what. It's bashing them when they deserve bashing, which is pretty much all the time. If they actually did something right, a lot of us would be the first to say so.
Of course, some may bash them no matter what, but any of us who bash them part of the time ended up being painted with the same brush.
Microsoft has enough history of bad behavior that assuming everything they do has a bad motive behind it isn't bashing-- it's the result of experience.
Jesus christ...the ribbon has been around for 11 years.
The interface hasn't had a radical change since.
By all means bash them for the stuff they do. Not the stuff you didn't like over a decade ago.
If that doesn't show you how really fucking awful the ribbon is, what will? It's not as if commentards actively refuse to learn it, it's there day in, day out. It's just such an atrocious user-hostile design, like TIFKAM. Both, incidentally, pushed by the same person.
Tony, only 11 years you say? Explains why the corporates I worked for were so very tardy to upgrade. No wonder so many people are sticking with XP, Win 7 etc. Never heard anything other than cursing when ribbon is mentioned. Anyway, much of my writing is still drafted in vi. IMHO, No Win10, no Office2019 should be regarded as promise, not a threat.
Jesus christ...the ribbon has been around for 11 years.
The interface hasn't had a radical change since.
By all means bash them for the stuff they do. Not the stuff you didn't like over a decade ago.
Every version that is released with this abomination of a UI is a fresh offense. It's not a decade ago... it's every single version for the last decade, up to and including the most recent.
"...Well, if you're forcing me to use MSAwful, I wouldn't want to be working for YOU either..."
We're on the same page.
I prefer to work with adults, not children who post stupid comments like that (anonymously of course) rather than accept basic truths such as the simplest that the vast majority of major business run mixes of systems chosen to fulfil the necessary function. That will inevitably be a mix of *nix and various flavours of Linux. It also pretty much inevitable they're going to run Microsoft software.
I absolutely love how so many espouse the freedom of choice. But not if that choice happens not to fall into line with their own narrow view of what is acceptable.
You realise this is how religions work right? Freedom to choose any you like but only this one is the right one...
Laughable.
And sure - downvote away but at least I have the courage to not post shit anonymously.
"I bet they love the extra work you cause them just so you can sit in your ivory tower radiating smugness at them."
These days you really have to work at it to cause a problem switching back and forth between MS Office and LibreOffice.
I don't pay any attention to which one I am using on which document. The only effects I have noticed in the last five years is one file created in Office that would not print properly in Office, but would print properly in LibreOffice, and LibreOffice is more intuitive and easier to use.
I've been doing this for quite a while. Ten years or so ago, Office would handle a larger spreadsheet, but that difference is long gone.
"I bet they love the extra work you cause them just so you can sit in your ivory tower radiating smugness at them."
I've never had a problem working with doc files generated by Libre Office in windows, unless you pick some exotic formatting method that's irritating on both ends.
But I have a solution for formatting problems: Have the recipients install Libre Office if formatting becomes an issue. or you can use google docs. whatever. Collaborative document files are irritating to maintain anyway. And if they're just going to print it, or keep it on file someplace, send a PDF. Works for me.
"Microsoft-only" smugness is worse, by the way.
thinking of work, I should get some done. taking up too much time commenting on a 4-page-long comments when I originally didn't think I had anything to say that wasn't already said...
"I've used LibreOffice for years. If my colleagues have a problem with the files I send them, it's their problem, not mine."
You must work in education or something that's not a real business. Or you own the company. Otherwise you would have been fired by now for causing everyone else problems by your choice of crapware.
As a freelance consultant my route-1 for new situations is to update my CV and upload it to a jobsite.
If I didn't do that in Word (using very generic embedded code for formatting etc.) then I wouldn't get my CV scraped and I wouldn't get calls asking me to go and work for 'x'.
Sometimes you have to eat the lemons, no matter what kind of face you end up making as a result.
"Sometimes you have to eat the lemons, no matter what kind of face you end up making as a result."
Well, if the face in question is a DEATH face (because I happen to have a CITRUS allergy), then I have not choice but to seek a different website that accept something other than Word.
It is beyond comprehension why MS seem to be determined to drive away as many of their long term customers as possible. Suicidal? Thoughts?
Perhaps MS no longer wants to be in the OS business. Windows is not the superstar moneymaker it once was... I saw it written somewhere that Windows now only brings in 10% of Microsoft's revenue, and I would bet it consumes a lot more than 10% of Microsoft's resources to keep it going. Future forecasts are probably grim, given how little faith MS shows in the continued viability of the desktop PC... if Windows PC revenues drop as PC sales have been for years, but the development costs remain relatively constant, there will come a time when Windows becomes a money sink rather than a money maker.
As such, all of this apparently suicidal behavior on Microsoft's part might just be their Windows exit strategy. They could just announce that Microsoft is going to stop developing Windows in 2025, the last year they had promised to keep 10 updated, but this would be incredibly destructive to them. Most people still think of MS as inextricably bound to Windows, so MS announcing the end of Windows would seriously harm their reputation, not to mention their stock prices.
Not only that, but their Windows monopoly on the desktop is an asset that still has value, and to simply write it off would be akin to throwing money away. Perhaps there would be a way to monetize Windows in the short term, to milk it for all it is worth, while driving people away from Windows in the longer term, at which time they will have extracted the full value of their monopoly, and can just let the dried-out husk simply blow away?
Something like... what they're doing now.
Microsoft is not stupid. They have dealt with their corporate customers enough to know that this insane twice a year release schedule is tremendously disruptive to them. No Windows user benefits from constant code churn and the massive number of new bugs that necessarily must generate... not consumers, not small businesses, not education, not enterprise. Everyone needs an operating system, and an operating system is supposed to be a stable foundation upon which other things are built, and Windows 10 fails spectacularly in that role. By design, I think.
Microsoft wants all Windows users not already trapped in the Windows 10 torture chamber to either leave the Windows platform or get in line for their torture session in 10. If they leave now, great! One less person to have to drive away later. If they get in line for the torture chamber, also great! They can be monetized during their daily beatings, and eventually they will realize what a bunch of shit this is and escape.
I used to think I would just stick with 7 and wait; surely at SOME point Microsoft will get a clue and stop with the stupid, right? If I wait long enough, won't Windows 10 have to become something I would want to use?
I don't think so anymore. I don't think it was meant to be a good OS for users, and I don't think it ever will be.
So, Linux it is. I'm not one of the Stallman-esque Linux fans who thinks all commercial software is wrong... I actually liked Windows. XP was a trusty friend; 7 wasn't bad either. Even 8.1 is pretty good once you strip out the stupid stuff and add Classic Shell and a few other things. But 10... no, just no. It changes too fast to even try to modify it into something decent. You get it all set up the way you want, aftermarket programs like Classic Shell set just right, various Powershell scripts and such having done neat things like rip out the apps no one asked for in the first place... you've got Windows update creatively broken in such a way that returns more or less full control over when or whether to install updates to you, and the spying is (to the best of your knowledge) under control. And then the next build comes and breaks all of that... not only does it introduce tons of new bugs, but it forces everyone to start over at step 1 in trying to modify the thing to be a decent OS (and that's a hell of a lot of work).
It's too much. Maybe if LTSB was made available to everyone (even for enterprise customers, MS strongly tries to steer them away from LTSB for their daily-use PCs), it would be somewhat okay, but only because a stationary target can eventually be ripped and torn and made into something that serves the users rather than MS, but MS knows this. They're not going to let us have the "good" version; we were given the bad version for a reason!
So, no, MS is not suicidal, but that Nadella guy with his head in his... er, the cloud, can't see any value beyond that. They elected a cloud guy, and that's what they got.
"Windows is not the superstar moneymaker it once was"
It still is.
" I saw it written somewhere that Windows now only brings in 10% of Microsoft's revenue"
Because they have diversified and massively increased other revenue. Not because they make less on Windows. For instance Microsoft overtook AWS in cloud revenue run rate 2 quarters ago!
"I saw it written somewhere that Windows now only brings in 10% of Microsoft's revenue"
But without Windows to run their other revenue sources on, their entire product line would dry up. OK, maybe not the entire line, but just how much of Microsoft's revenue stream does not require a copy of Windows to make it usable. Not much, and their competition is fiercest in those segments.
"but just how much of Microsoft's revenue stream does not require a copy of Windows to make it usable. "
Lots of it. Office 365 web apps are multiplatform, Azure runs about 30% Linux VMs, Hyper-V server runs without Windows and they already wrote a layer to run SQL Server on Linux.
I recently replaced my dads computer with Linux Mint and Libre Office (from Win XP and Office 2010). I set up and migrated everything to be as close to how he had it before; named icons, everything filed on the desktop, etc. sat with him for half a day explaining everything was where he'd left it, and thought after a couple of weeks he'd be fine with it...
Er no, he tried his best but really struggled, most of his Word documents that he used as templates didn't format correctly and he couldn't come to terms with correcting the formatting, plus he managed to get Libre Office to regularly say "something's gone wrong, I'm going to have to restart"
Most of his other problems were of the type; "well to do <insert task>, I usually click here, here and here, then do that". This is the main problem - there are many users out there who have learned a rote sequence of mouse moves and key-presses - they don't think in terms of "I want to manipulate the thing in this way, so I'll look around the menus for something that does the job I'm after"
FWIW he went out and bought Win 10 and Office 2016 and is extremely happy with it and able to work like he used to.
Yes, those of us that can switch, do switch - but you aren't going to beat this type of inertia in enterprise deployments any time soon
@Ben1892
I made a similar point a while back in a similar thread on a similar subject.
I'm a techie but the truth is when I get home of an evening I don't want to learn new ways to do the things I already do. I just want to do them and then go do something more interesting to me.
The issue you describe will always trump anything else.
And to be fair, Office does handle some things really well. Templates are a good example. In Microsoft Office File-New opens a screen with the available templates, albeit forcing you to see a page full of other crap too in the more recent versions. In Writer you have to go to the bottom of a dropdown menu. And in earlier versions it was much ropier than that - this kind of functionality seems to have been an afterthought
For any item you think Office handles well I name you ten things it handles badly. To name just one thing (or ten things, depending how you count): Style sheets.
Word is doing it so badly that there are professional text workers who refuse to use them, for instance scientific publishers. They still use .doc as a raw submission format (except for those handful of super-nerd journals that use LaTeX), but inside the file they prefer to just have as plain-text as possible. You could use a plain-text file, too, except that the senior people (the bosses) refuse to deal with this ugly shit. Images cannot be submitted inside Word files anyway – to much probability that Word reduces the quality to shitty – so you need to send separate TIFFs anyways. Besides, no one is using Word or Publisher to produce the final product – it's practically all InDesign (or the aforementioned LaTeX in very rare cases. Even this probably goes through InDesign at the very end). Scientific publishers typically use student interns to copy the raw submission Word into InDesign. By hand – mark, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, repeat. Truly.
Guess what Microsoft's own publishing department uses. You know, for brochures, manuals, etc.
Why do they sell and advertise this crap if they do not even use it themselves? There was a time – actually, it still is – where text related software houses were proud the manual was written with the product itself.
The problem is that there's no word processor on Windows (or Linux) that actually does it much better. They all are basically Word clones (except maybe WordPerfect, but that is too expensive to be a real replacement). On the Mac, there are a handful of proper WYSIWYG word processors that actually do it better.
Not that you actually need a proper WYSIWYG word processor if writing is your thing. For web publishing, a markdown plain-text editor works just fine, and there are plenty, each with its own specialty on top of the markdown. For long-term texts, there's Scrivener and its clones (albeit you need to produce and be able to work with a .doc file with comments and change tracking on the way to publishing, sadly. LibreOffice does work for that, mostly, though).
That leaves business letters. And let's face it, you do not need the massive functionality Word offers for that. Except that the business world has standardized on it. Mostly out of ignorance being pushed by the Redmonders..
This is clearly a way of MS trying to sell more Window 10 upgrades as I doubt there is any technical reason why Office 2019 couldn't run on Windows 7. And i bet someone will work how out to do it when it eventually arrives.
As others have pointed out, other than the fact there are no support for the older Office versions there is usually little worth upgrading to a new version of Office for most users.
It's a corporate edition so no need for activation.
I have 'gone to the dark side' and have Windows 10 (64-bit) on my new machine. My copy of Office 2007, one decade old, still runs flawlessly.
You don't really need newer copies of Office, including Office 365 (which is the gold standard for the WaaS fantasies at Redmond). If you want to install an open source alternative and everything still works for you, go ahead and more power to you.
Not too long ago, Office was the final ransom Microsoft held over all PC users. Those days are largely over. Unless you need Microsoft's enterprise or software development solutions, you can have a fabulous IT life that is almost 100% Microsoft-free. Wean yourself off Skype and Linkedin (both became crappy after Microsoft's acquisition), and liberate yourself.
Office 2007 does not comply fully even with the transitional specification of OOXML. Consequently there are problems with compatibility. I know because I've removed Excel 2007 specific shit from my library. Office 2010 is fully compatible and Office 2016 is very much a rewrite with bigger spreadsheets being much faster. So my advice would be to dump Office 2007. Whether you go with one of Microsoft's later offerings or the competition is another matter.
It gets worse, my friend.
Some things will be made exclusive on the Microsoft app store. Some users will be baited into the trap.
For example, Diagnostic Data Viewer, 'available free on the Windows Store'. That means you need a Microsoft account.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/25/microsoft_windows_10_privacy/
Oh, and the venerable Age of Empires game, a Windows Store exclusive.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/350417-fans-outraged-age-empires-definitive-editions-windows-store-exclusivity
So desperate to grow the third (turd) ecosystem, SatNad's Microsoft resorts to underhanded ransomware tactics by using its in-house games.
A word processor does just that.
A spread sheet program does spread sheets.
A Publisher program does just that.
And they will STILL do it in a hundred years time.
Just what "future innovations" are MS referring to??
Furthermore: " the message is that those on old versions of Windows are cutting themselves off from the future. ®"
Which MS shill paid you to stick that in? The future isn't as MScentric as they would like us to believe.
They call me the king of the spreadsheets
Got 'em printed out on my bedsheets
My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks
But it was obsolete before I opened the box
You say you've had your desktop for over a week?
Throw that junk away, man, it's an antique
Your laptop is a month old? Well that's great
If you could use a nice, heavy paperweight
"Tell that to the gamers."
And the vast majority of enterprises and SMEs.
Windows + Office + Exchange + Skype is by far the best solution on the market in so many ways. Google Apps could have nailed them but Microsoft went and did it better. Now hardly anyone goes with Google even with vast discounts on offer. Ditto Google cloud. They are basically giving it away and still don't have many takers. AWS owns it for most in ecommerce and webscale, but in more traditional companies Azure now has more traction.
We're pretty much stuck on Windows 7 at the moment for legacy kit but moved to office 365 when 2007 support for exchange 365 ended so the big question for me is whether existing installs of office 365 are going to stop working at this point or will they continue to limp along with no security updates until MS to decide to cut them off from their other services completely whenever that will be.
Open source would be great but we are dependant on a lot of Excel macros as well as other bits and pieces that we just can't move over.
Matt
"Open source would be great but we are dependant on a lot of Excel macros as well as other bits and pieces that we just can't move over"
And add-ins. And integration. And performance. And scalability. And proper support. And an enterprise calendar solution. And a long list of other things. Freeware might work for certain users in some businesses but in general it's simply not enterprise grade.
I know Microsoft meant this to be a bad thing, but actually it is a blessing. Office peaked in 2003. Since then each version hasn't been as good. But it is like a roller coaster: it goes down a lot, then up a little but not as high where it started, then down a lot, then up a little but not as high as when it started, then down a lot, and repeat.
Office 2003 was great. Then 2007 introduced that accursed ribbon that Microsoft puts everywhere when it should be nowhere. 2010 was better than 2007 because you could customize that accursed ribbon. 2013 was much because the MENUS WHERE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS MAKING THEM HARD ON THE EYES, and Microsoft was full-on stupid (still is) with the dog-butt ugly UI. 2016 was better because it returned proper capitalization to menus, but now it requires your email address to even use it. I expect 2019 version to be absolute garbage. I still have a valid license for 2003 version, and I ain't giving it up.
"The last time I installed Office 2016 for someone (1 month ago), I used the license key and it made me create an Office account before it would activate."
No such issues here. I have used both MSDN and MAK keys with Office 2016 and you can definitely activate it with no account.
Microsoft say thats still the case with Office 2019 too:
Office 2019 uses device-based licenses similar to previous major versions. Users will be able to sign in if they want to. However, they are not required to do this. Key Management Service (KMS) and Multiple Activation Keys (MAK) activation are available to volume license users for offline licensing. No internet connection is required to use the product.
So what is actually going to happen with office 365 running on, say, windows 8.1? Will it just stop updating?
Assuming you have windows 10, will your office 2016 upgrade to office 2019? It's really unclear what Microsoft are doing, with so many different versions and ways of buying this product.
The article doesn't seem to mention the other bit, Office 2019 is going to be Click-To-Run only, there will be no MSI install.
Microsoft pushing everyone towards the cloud. They have a very long way to go to convince this sysadmin that their cloud is anything like secure enough for me to recommend to my bosses.
The Cloud, why are people still using that phony term?
We started this ride decades ago on Network Terminals and guess where they wants back to?
No thank you, we have solutions to your threats of exclusion and malwares and we will use them.
Mind you the sheeple phone generation will follow through with this because not doing so would be hard.
"the message is that those on old versions of Windows are cutting themselves off from the future."
Much like those that didn't buy a ticket on the shiny modern state of the art Titanic.
Lesson: the future is not always better than the present, just more expensive and possibly more risky.
Must go, just off to install my new IoT home security system. I can control my door locks from this great app on my phone. So can my fridge. Don't know how I survived without it.
I have long observed, and said, that Microsoft does not care about end users, or what they do with the software. They care about sales, and sales only. So their only focus point are their customers, which are not end users – for the most part, it's mid- to high-level corporate executives whose work does seldom revolve around MS Office.
Just read the press statement, and find one word in there that is relevant to you if actually need to use Office to do your work. You won't find one – it's all business/marketing/executive/pointy-haired-boss yada yada.
The problem is that Microsoft's attitude and lack of understanding of end user needs is terribly disruptive. It leads to 3rd-rate quality software (as an example, compare Word to Nisus Writer [alas, Mac only], which you could call 'Word-as-it-should-be'). I've heard a statistic lately that 15%-20% of office work time is wasted on the struggle of end users with software and related problems, and from my own experience I can attest that this time wasting was greatly reduced when I switched to a Mac (being in the fortunate profession where I could easily do it with no significant obstacles).
On top of that, it is not a stable business model for Microsoft themselves. I would call it suicidal or self-destructive, except that MS was successful in getting too big and dominant to simply die.
The announced business strategy does nothing to make things better for end users, and is likely to make things worse. I think MS knows that, too, but there's no way for them to get off the ship without taking a sizable economic hit.
I'm not sure how to react to that. Given MS dominance, I wish they would accept their responsibility and start making better software instead fo continuing of pushing their stuff no matter what. I don't hate them or wish them to die, but in the sake of my sanity, for myself I have decided a long time ago to get the fuck out (I still need to deal with those god-awful Office file formats, mostly .doc/.docx, but fortunately non-MS software is actually dealing rather well with it lately that I do not have to deal with the big bad wolf itself). Maybe if everyone who can should do it, too, to make MS and everyone who requires it wake up. But I don't actually see this happening. For the foreseeable future, we have to continue towards dystopia.
Though it doesn't come as a surprise. You could see those problems decades ago in Microsoft's attitude.
If end users struggle in Word, Excel (in my experience) it's when they try to do things out of the ordinary.
eg ask a user to type a letter to someone and include an image on the page, or a spreadsheet to add a load of numbers they'll get something that works.
ask them to put the image in the header of the first page of the document but not subsequent pages and put page numbers and document date on the bottom of each page - they'll flounder for a while, or ask a colleague if they know how it's done.
By comparison I hardly ever hear users complaining that Word just ate their document which used to happen more in the old days.
Oh? Adobe seems to be doing just fine using the same strategy. And it makes business sense to stop the one-and-dones and go to the repeat business of Software as a Service. And they still control enough market share to dictate terms (because for every one user able to jump to an alternative there are probably nine who can't due to legacy stuff they can't change over or DIE orders from on high).
Same thing said by Adobe, etc...
Just recognize that office evolution is done and move on. The only thing missing is self writing powerpoint/word document I guess - it wouldn't be part of an office package I believe though, more like an OS feature. But I think that these electronic crutches have done their thing and now we're ready to do stuff without them. Back to analogue I say! At least for humans.
Would be surprised if there isn't a high correlation between the time when Apple became really "cool" and the time Windows 8 and Window 10 came out. Devastatingly bad UX design. I gave an iMac a try because of it. Don't care for Apple OS but MS makes it an easy choice.
With the exception of hardcore Excel monkeys, everyone I know is either on Google Docs or Keynote. Word and Powerpointless are extremely shit.
Office 2019 will be on every device when they realise the limitations of a market based soley on Windows business fleets.
I wish chimps would stop buying Microsoft crap.
"everyone I know is either on Google Docs or Keynote."
Last stats I saw a few months ago had Google on a few percent versus Microsoft on 90% for Office software. And O365 is wiping the floor with Google Apps - more users and growing much faster.
Google's product also has major shortcomings like no DRM without viewing documents in a internet connected browser.
Until Intel fixes their CPU cockup so we don't have to patch the current ones back to 2010 levels of computing power all of this is just laughable.
Most of the work I've seen people doing really shouldn't need a GUI. A dumb terminal to enter data is the most they really need.
Until Intel fixes their CPU cockup so we don't have to patch the current ones back to 2010 levels of computing power all of this is just laughable.
I happen to use Cygwin as I am tired of programs occasionally segfaulting in buntu/Windows 10, e.g. wget. Problem is, my build takes 2.5 times longer with the Spetre and Meltdown patches, I have no noticeable difference with ubuntu/Windows 10 (when it completes without segfaulting) as compared to Cygwin, so the claim "native speeds" for the Linux subsystem turned out to be native speeds on a raspberry pi 1 ... on an i5. So for me, more like 2005 levels of computing power ... on Linux, the time Cygwin finishes, Linux has built it 8 times in a row already.
It's funny how people say that they can't use LibreOffice because it doesn't faithfully open MS Office documents 100% correctly 100% of the time ... when Micro$oft seems to be doing just fine with Office 365 on the web, which has the same problem. I daresay it might even be worse.
The worst file corruption I ever had with a Word file was a file that originated on a fully up-to-date Word:Mac version that was completely hosed upon opening with a not fully up-to-date Word:Win. The solution? Take the original file, open it in LibreOffice/OpenOffice or Pages, re-save as .doc.
In my experience, using LibreOffice is much lower probability in FUBARring Word files than Word itself. The big problem is these godawful file formats Microsoft decided to employ that everyone and their mum uses to exchange files with. If you could only teach people to use some other format for sharing. For a long time, you could use the original Word file format, RTF. Except that the majority of users didn't understand how, why, when, what for.
"when Micro$oft seems to be doing just fine with Office 365 on the web, which has the same problem"
Office Web Apps doesn't have many issues with displaying documents compared to the common place problems on Google Apps. And anyway enterprise O365 subscriptions include a full local install of Office and pretty much everyone uses it.
You have got to be joking.
My employer has dictated that us drones shall verily use Orifice 2016, which I have had to endure for the past many months.
I have to observe that my productivity has taken one serious nosedive,
Orifice 2016 is an unmitigated pile of rotting faeces. It is utter shite.
I have looked at some professional publisher – book publishers, novels – and the most common guideline for the file an author submits to them you find everywhere is this: ".doc format, Times New Roman, 12 pt".
Why is the font in there? It's one of the basic functions of modern word processors. Every word processor I know can change the font of the current file, and the publisher should be able to hire a person to check the submitted files and change it. Every word processor I know, even Word, can change just the font without changing any other parameter of the text. I know. I've done it countless times myself.
The thing is, we're talking about Word here. You CAN do it. The problem is, it's not easy. It requires a inordinate amount of discipline of the user doing it. It's buggy. It's error prone. It has the capability to FUBAR the whole file (which it shouldn't, given that is so basic). In short Word is crap. It's so crappy that PROFESSIONALS dealing with it prefer to have others do it rather than themselves.