Microsoft to preload Word minutes after boot

Microsoft later this month plans to begin loading Word shortly after folks' computers begin booting up – to "optimize performance" or at least improve their perception of it. The software giant's customers commonly kvetch about slow Office load times, and Microsoft offers various strategies for improving performance, which may …

[John Smith 19]

IOW

Yet another tool to force you to upgrade your hardware.

Just remember. MS had no friends in the software business.

They keep HW mfgs in business. The HW mfg's don't make it easy to support other OS's.

And so the mutual co-dependency started with the "Microsoft tax" continues.

Thanks a bunch.

[NewModelArmy]

Re: IOW

I run Linux on a 11 year old laptop (SSD) and LibreOffice applications open within 3 seconds.

Latest AMD build PC opens LO applications in 1 second.

There must be some serious bloat in WIndows Office for Microsoft to want to pre-load their applications at boot.

[Mage]

Re: IOW

LO Writer Less than 10 s on my old workstation (SSD + HDD). Templates, dictionaries, docs etc on 4T HDD. Linux Mint.

My wiped Chromebook with Linux Mint 22.1 is 15 to 20 second boot and LO Writer in about 2 to 3 seconds. A 64 G EMMC and 256 G microSD card. I disabled suspend as it shuts down instantly and boots fast enough when lid opened.

Load and restore of XP VM on the old Linux Workstation 11 s. Loading Word 2002/XP is <4s (but bits might be lurking from last run as it's not a cold boot, LO Writer 5.2 is 15s

Every Windows since 1994 I have been disabling stuff at boot to get decent boot time. Win7 made me decide to move 100% to Linux. I still have a Win10 laptop with its hugely slow boot and shutdown that's even worse, atrocious actually, if there is an update. Updates on Linux, even Kernel, are no bother at all. NT 4.0 hadn't the issues of Win7 and Win10 with updates (and yes, I applied HotFixes).

[Andrew Scott]

Re: IOW

win 10. outlook took 4.9 seconds to open and word took 3 seconds. everything related to ms in the startup is disabled except windows security. doesn't sound like it needs to be pre-loaded. generally don't like apps loading until i want them.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: IOW

Make a backup with DriveSnapshot, test you can restore it by booting from a Windows USB stick or something similar.

Then upgraded to Windows 11. And measure again.

Then restore your backup.

[bazza]

Re: IOW

When you install Libre Office on Windows, it gives an option to "load Libre Office at system start". I wonder if it's doing the same on Linux by default?

[Anonymous Coward]

Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

"what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away."

That was the old law of computing. Andy and Bill retired long ago, but their law lives on.

Whatever technological miracles are wrought to make your computer do magic, Microsoft will add code to make you wait yet again for "services" you neither need nor want.

Clippy was not enough, now you get a complete AI boiling the oceans to ruin your day with unwanted and misleading advice.

[TReko]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

A 30 year old joke:

"c - the speed of light, constant irrespective of the speed of the observer.

w - the speed of Windows, constant irrespective of the speed of the hardware"

[Sudosu]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

This is so true!

Personal computers are incomprehensively mind bogglingly fast comparted to what they were a couple decades ago yet they feel slower than my first 486.

I've said this before, but the quickest feeling computer I ever encountered was a Pentium 90 in the store that would open Office applications before you could get your finger off the mouse after the second click.

Office today is bigger than any triple A game from the 90s...and maybe early-mid 2000's. Let that sink in.

I could do functional document editing fine on my Commodore 64, a 40+ year old computer that is far less powerful than your smart watch.

I could do without all the pretty; if software ran securely, reliably and fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

Hear hear. How can a machine a thousand times faster than the ones I grew up with still (sometimes) not be able to keep up with my typing? Answer: Microsoft.

I learned to code on TI graphing calculators. Made me highly value both storage/memory space and execution time when writing code. I wish most programmers had a similar experience.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

You are citing Joe Armstrong, who wondered why machines over 1000 time faster don't boot in less than 10 milliseconds...

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

So office apps on a Mac are by some distance the fattest, at 1 GB EACH for Word, PowerPoint etc.

On the works Windows box, there’s enough corporate security stuff going on to make me go for coffee after boot. This will just make me walk slower to the canteen.

And then my first word processor ran on my BBC model B. Perfectly adequate performance because it came on a 16 kB ROM. I wrote my Masters thesis on it. Now I have laptops literally thousands of times faster and infinitely more capable and it’s still the same performance. Go figure.

[bazza]

Re: Andy & Bill's law is alive and kicking

>So office apps on a Mac are by some distance the fattest, at 1 GB EACH for Word, PowerPoint etc.

Isn't that because all Mac apps come with all (supported) locales in one lump (a consequence of how Mac apps are put together?)?

Resource files for every single language under the sun which Word supports must amount to a large amount of data.

[Gunnar Wolf]

Been there, done that...

I don't recall the name it had back then, but I used to be tech support for a school between 1997 and 1999. In Windows 98 there was a startup task that, precisely, pre-loaded some of Office's functionality. I guess it was scraped over time, and now... it's presented as a new, shiny idea?

Anyway, with a decently recent machine (vitally, using a good SSD), I usually get less than one minute from boot until I have a usable word processor open... under Linux ☻

[Grindslow_knoll]

Re: Been there, done that...

This. Each iteration I'm forced to use Windows, startup gets slower even on clean installations. On Linux, not so much, a cold boot on a 4 year old laptop can have a fully responsive desktop in no time.

Overall latency is so much better.

Ironic given that systemd leads work at Microsoft (?), and way back when it was systemd that featured as one improvement the startup-analyze scripts to accelerate and debug Linux boot times.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Been there, done that...

systemd was designed for laptops used by idiots. The speed with which one of my systems boots is completely irrelevant since it only happens once per month, and only if there's a kernel update.

You say you want a service to be automatically restarted. I say you coulnd't write a stable application if your life depended on it.

You say you want services started in a particular order. I say, surely you can count to 100, over here we teach that in kindergarden.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Been there, done that...

"laptops used by idiots"

What did you type this on? A server?

[LeeLynx]

Re: Been there, done that...

I do not really want to defend this guy, but you are familiar with desktops, yes? That is what I am typing this on, and it generally does not get restarted unless there is an extended power outage.

[AJ MacLeod]

Re: Been there, done that...

I have several laptops running Linux and not one of them uses systemd (somewhat ironically I look after quite a few servers which do, and it has not infrequently caused me great pain.)

[m4r35n357]

Re: Been there, done that...

Come on now, who in their right mind would want a deterministic boot sequence? Weirdo!

[Headley_Grange]

This is well outside my areas of expertise so I might have misunderstood, but isn't the obvious evolution of this that more and more apps get pre-loaded to speed them up until your PC takes ages to just boot up?

[davie887]

Sounds like Vista

[Martin Gregorie]

That sounds about right if you're unable to control the size and content of the "preload" list. If the preload list's size and content is predefined by M$ or automatically extended by automatically adding programs as the user loads them for the first time, then I predict it will be soon removed unless it has a built-in ability to edit the content of the preload list and/or to kill the preload process.

[Giles C]

Sounds like it, my work mac well I can go days without starting word, most of my work is done in web browsers or terminal sessions, the biggest drain on it is running teams, slack, Webex, zoom and outlook for email - it depends on who I am talking to which messaging app you need (and most of the are internal staff)

[93s]

not evolution. this was a trick that lots--and i mean lots--of 90s software used. including office. that was back when bloat was increasing at a rate faster than memory prices were dropping.

the cloud gave us back the pros and cons of the mainframe. now were using an kludge-y old strategy to reduce the latency and bloat of cloudy features. lovely.

[JohnG]

Yes, that's exactly what happens. Much of the load at startup nonsense is for each application to check for updates. Then there's all the spyware aka customer experience stuff, sending your data to "carefully selected third parties"

[Giles C]

Updates are a pain. I know my work machines is pending at least a few (it was before I had last week off) so I will probably fire it up Monday evening and get them out the way before starting my week and going into the office on Tuesday.

[sedregj]

4GB? bloody 'ell! Word 2.0 installed in a couple of meg and was a perfectly decent word processor.

[CowHorseFrog]

One has to wonder how typing a 100 or 1000 characters needs a 4 BILLION byte program and memory.

[SnailFerrous]

Yes but look what you get for your three orders of magnitude more memory. I remember in Word back then you could only type one letter out of the twenty six, it was z and it couldn't deal with capitals, punctuation, paragraphs, titles, bold, italic, or any of the other features the present day version can do.

A thousand times more memory usage is a worthwhile trade off for it being a thousand times better and more productive. /s

[Wexford]

I made the mistake of trying boldface, and had to download a floppy disk of libraries over a 14.4kb model to load up. After that debacle I just stuck to typing "z".

[MiguelC]

Well, with O364 under Win11, Excel recently started to hang every time I applied any kind of formatting (bold letters, table outlining, etc.), sometimes requiring me to kill the process and restarting from wherever I was.

Some online searching found me the solution: change the default printer do PDF. Applied it and didn't have a problem anymore.

Ah, evolution.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

I expected the suggestion to create a bonfire, offer your pet, wear atztek headgear and wait for the lightning to strike while you dance...

[Roland6]

My understanding is that Office 4.2 is the oldest version of Word et al that will install in W11 compatibility mode. However, those that only need basic document and spreadsheet capabilities Works also installs on W11.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Works. An utterly crap piece of software which by default used its own proprietary formats, which Office couldn't read. At one point I was getting sent them fairly regularly by various colleagues who wanted them converting into a readable format.

[davie887]

More bloat in order to reduce bloat

Seems like a monumentally stupid idea. The best option would be to preload the absolute bare minimum and let the user decide what they want to open.

Also seems like a solution in search of a problem. The average PC where I work logs in and can launch Word withing a minute or so and weren't not cutting edge on the shop floor by any means

[bazza]

Re: More bloat in order to reduce bloat

Libre Office on Windows offers to set itself up in a similar way, when you install it.

I've literally just installed 7.6.2.1 on W11, and that's what it offered.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: More bloat in order to reduce bloat

But it ASKS you! It SHOWS you what it suggests! See the difference?

BTW: 7.6.* is old (not that old, but old). They started numbering by "release year", so currently 24.* as last stable, and 25.* as frontier.

[IGotOut]

Of course they will...

...Word will come preloaded with "AI". By launching it then pausing it, they can say "AI" number go up.

[TRT]

You know that bit in The Meaning Of Life...

where Mr Creosote gets so fat and bloated that he explodes?

That's Word that is.

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Re: You know that bit in The Meaning Of Life...

But, but, ... it's wafer thin ...

[Ken Shabby]

Re: You know that bit in The Meaning Of Life...

Better… Better get a bucket

[JoeCool]

Is it May 1 or April 1 ?

Yes, please give my IT department yet another resource hog to autostart on startup and login.

[CowHorseFrog]

How did Word run on 4M pcs 20 years ago, and now it needs more than 4G just for itself ?

[PRR]

> How did Word run on 4M pcs 20 years ago, and now it needs more than 4G just for itself ?

Actually WINWORD from Office 2003 (22 years) with a graphics-heavy doc takes 16Meg. What a piggie!

On a 3Ghz DuoCore it will launch in less than a second.

Just sayin'.

[Wade Burchette]

And Office 2003 didn't have that design abomination known as the ribbon. And sadly, Microsoft insists on putting it everywhere when it should never have been anywhere.

Whether it is auto-starting Word, to installing unwanted AI, to auto-starting Edge, to putting the stupid ribbon into everything, to encrypting the hard drive without permission, to making it next to impossible to not provide them any personal information to use the computer -- Microsoft shows once again that they assume their your computer is their computer and that they are wiser than the "customer". Who gave them the right to auto-start Word without my permission? No one, that is who. Sooner or later, they are going to go too far and businesses will jump ship to Linux, not because they want to, but because they are just too angry at what Microsoft is doing.

[CowHorseFrog]

Is there a difference between 4M and 16M when you are comparing those numbers against todays 4G gorilla ?

[TRT]

Once upon a time one could fit the entire word processor in the memory footprint that today is taken up by the Application Icon.

[DrewPH]

Haven't used Word in 10 years

LibreOffice loads its first document within 3 seconds on a clean boot on my Mac M1.

Is there a "just sayin" icon?

[BenDwire]

Re: Haven't used Word in 10 years

Is there a "just sayin" icon?

I think it's the one with the Tux the penguin ...

(No, it's not Feathers McGraw)

[Winkypop]

In the beginning

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, with a slight delay to let Word load…

[TRT]

Re: In the beginning

And on the sixth day...

[Pete Sdev]

Re: In the beginning

And on the 7th day he rested.

Which I've often wondered about.

I appreciate creating a universe is in all likelihood fairly hard work requiring a bit of elbow grease.

Though why an omnipotent being needs to put its feet up after 6 days, presumably for a cup of tea and a twix, is a mystery.

[Henry Wertz 1]

They got rid of that?

They got rid of that? I quir using Windows and Office so long ago I didn't realize. Back in the 90's or early 2000s office defaulted to doing a preload. People'd be like 'Why the F is it taking so long for this to boot?' (it was also real nice to have Office hogging your RAM when you wanted to do something else.). I recall turning that preload off for several people's systems,

[David Hicklin]

Re: They got rid of that?

From memory I think Office 97 used to have a preloader in the startup folder that I always removed on new installs (this from the days as THE IT person at a small company...)

Now retired I don't care if I have to wait a few seconds for word/excel 2010 (yes 2010!) to load up, its pretty damm quick anyway on my 2nd hand refurbished HP ProBook 450 G5

[the Kris]

If Word loads so slow, maybe fix that before adding even more bloat code...

[Richard 12]

Who is this for?

If your job involves a significant amount of Microsoft Word, then you'll be starting it immediately after logging on - not waiting ten minutes.

If it doesn't, then you probably aren't going to for a few hours, if at all, because you're doing your normal job.

So most days this will simply burn energy loading something into RAM, then unloading it again. And some days it will load into RAM, unload, then load again when you actually want it.

All while slowing down the things you're actually using.

[Mishak]

Quite

I do use Word, but probably only once or twice a month on average. And I've never noticed to being particularly slow to load when I do.

[Roland6]

Re: Who is this for?

Probably 365 users…

It probably takes 365 10 minutes to re-establish network connections, check drive sync status etc.

[Always Right Mostly]

How about:

a) De-bloat Word and the rest of Office. Each has 15,000 {made this up but maybe close} features that 99% of users will never use. Make them install if wanted.

b) I'd bet a beer that most people do not start Windows and go directly to Word. Browser, yes. If corporate, Outlook, Excel.

Idiots.

[aks]

That reminds me of the old adage that 87.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[drankinatty]

Installs on spinning rust -- need not apply (hopefully)

Let's hope M$ is smart enough not to try to pre-load word on those rare few boxes still loading from spinning disks.

While m.2 and sata SSD may provide enough I/O to keep up with the never-ending amount of "stuff" that windows attempts to load at startup, platter disks are already pegged at 100% saturation for up to 30 minutes waiting edge to load/update and for the beloved CompatTelRunner to chew through terabytes of storage looking for software to notify the mother-ship about. Layer preloading another 4G of word on top of that pleasant period of time, may well provide time for several coffee breaks and the morning constitutional -- before windows becomes usable (it that is actually possible).

[navarac]

Why?

There has to be a suspect reason, maybe to load AI/Copilot shit first, before you can stop it. Is Microsoft's telemetry showing more users using LO now, then? Strange; because Microsoft's uneducated lot when it comes to explaining stuff, wouldn't know how to process words in the first place!

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Nice, but...

I hardly ever use Word at work. I do, however, use Excel. So Excel load will be impacted because the system is busy loading an app I almost never use...

[original_rwg]

Oh Dear

Yet another example of your PC doing something for Micros~1 before it does what you want it to do....

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

I'm pretty sure this sort of thing will go viral with people getting tired of program bloat :

https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/26/dos_distraction_free_writing/

[Anonymous Coward]

If I can't start working more than 10 minutes after I get into work, what's the point of being in on time?

[Dan 55]

Ten minute watercooler chat which only RTO can provide which apparently aids productivity.

[Sudosu]

Getting that computer up and running before the start of business Teams meeting is always a crap shoot as it is.

I'm to the point where I think I will hit the power button at start of day instead of 5-15 minutes before.

Maybe they will give me a new one...though I doubt it will help much.

[captain veg]

> what's the point of being in on time?

I wouldn't know.

Back in the days when physical office presenteeism was expected I used to leave my work computer on all the time and VPN in to it shortly after the morning existential battle with the bed force was, er, won. Since COVID no one expects me to be in any particular geographical location.

-A.

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Diggers routine

On a construction site, usually the digger driver, first thing in the morning, starts the engine and then goes forna coffee or tea, so that the engine and the hydraulics can get up to temperature.

We office bids should adopt that habit.

[Ian Johnston]

StarOffice (later OpenOffice, later LibreOffice) used to do this under OS/2. Nice to see Microsoft catching up.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

They used to do it under Windows, too. I used to keep turning it off. I open Word maybe once a month, I don't need it loaded into memory all the time.

[Anonymous Coward]

They do this with Edge/Internet Explorer too. To make it look faster than the competition.

[Sudosu]

I have seen this when I run my cleanup utility

"Edge is running and will need to be shut down to proceed"

"WTF, I haven't used Edge in 5 years, where is the uninstall for it?"

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Is on Server 2022/2025. You will have to switch your OS to that, if you want to stay on Windows.

[karlkarl]

Indeed. Can reliably uninstall Microsoft Defender too on Server.

[david 12]

It was already faster than the competition. I've use FF for 20+ years, and it was always slower to load than Explorer, and is still slower to load than Edge or Google Chrome

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Bad and rude behaviour

So much software behaves like "I am the only one important, and you shall have no other important besides me".

MS-Office did that a few times, Steam did "by default autostart" for a very short time (the screams were very loud two decades ago), EA-Origin did that way too long, LO-option to pre-load is there but easy to deselect, the list is nearly endless.

Even the "pre load when nothing is going on" stuff is questionable, 'cause the resources are blocked and not unloaded as fast as marketing propaganda department says. The only pre-load I am fine with are Windows-Updates. BITS actually works quite well.

It is the classical "dog-eat-dog society" problem, with the result we all know.

[Anonymous Anti-ANC South African Coward]

Re: Bad and rude behaviour

Going to be interesting if all the software start to "preload" themselves into memory after installation - then cause even more issues for you as end-user...

Naaaa.

Like the one poster somewhere above said - why not just install only the basic features of these programs? The end-user will most of the time only use the basic functions.

Any other functions can be invoked or loaded with dynamic link libraries... or am I wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Bad and rude behaviour

"Like the one poster somewhere above said - why not just install only the basic features of these programs? The end-user will most of the time only use the basic functions.

Any other functions can be invoked or loaded with dynamic link libraries... or am I wrong?"

I suspect MS applications are one giant can of spaghetti which wouldn't factor into separate modules or DLLs. Back in the day when the 286 protected mode was supported I would assume various functionality would have been placed in separate segments which wouldn't be loaded into memory if none of its functions were invoked.

I assume modern Windows uses demand paging and lazing binding which spaghetti code could really thrash about until the working set was loaded but then I would also assume LTO would fix some of that?

Perhaps MS could resurrect the old, obsolete Unix trick of keeping a copy of the in memory text image of an executable in the swap space (the sticky bit) to speed up program loading.

Really do more than 5% of Office users use more than the Wordpad subset of Word? Those few that do probably really need a proper desktop publishing application (not from MS.) The number of users that use Word to create HTML/CSS monstrosities that purport to be web pages is a good enough reason for ditching Office. There a far better applications for most of MS touted tat

[Simon Harris]

Bring back the BBC B.

All your major applications ready to go in no time as they were pre-loaded... into EPROM.

[Mage]

Re: Bring back the BBC B.

Wasn't the Mac like that originally too?

[Sudosu]

Re: Bring back the BBC B.

I miss applications on cartridges.

[Irongut]

Not on my PC Satya

Wow. I've been using Word since DOS and Microsoft finally found a way to make me remove it.

You are not preloading your shite on my computer for the twice a year I actually use the program. The only useful part of Office was Excel and I'm sure Libre Office can handle my requirements there.

[Cliffwilliams44]

In the age of SSDs

In the age of SSDs, why is this even necessary. Is it to preload data gathering software at boot and hide it under the office banner?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: In the age of SSDs

Just adds to the absurdity of all the bloat in Microsoft's code base.

[BenMyers]

Since when is 8GB "beefy"?

Microsoft continually avoids the real world to make it easier for 3rd tier brands and even name brands with schlock computers to sell underpowered computers to an unwitting and uninformed public. Sorry, Satya, but a computer with only 8GB of memory running Windows 11 is a recipe for a computer that impersonates a slug. Worse yet, with so little memory, one of these 8GB computers will wear out an SSD with constant swapping of data and code segments as the user changes the focus from one app to another.

So let's say that 16GB is the bare minimum for Windows 11, and 32GB for any computer used for heavy lifting.

One would hope that it is possible to disable the preloading of Word to free up memory for other regularly used tasks. And when one finishes using preloaded Word, does it still remain in memory?

Microsoft goes off the rails again, doing something questionable, when actual software design and engineering are called for.

[IvaliceResident]

Re: Since when is 8GB "beefy"?

Eh I have Windows 11 running in a VM with 4gb allocated on my Mac. It runs mostly fine and it use it mostly to run 32 bit games. Do edit documents with Word occasionally in it and light browsing. However the increase in ram requirements from win10 seems largely pointless imo other than to sell more stuff.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Since when is 8GB "beefy"?

I think your keyboard swapped the 10 and 11 here.

[Eponymous Bastard]

Turn it all off

Why is there not an option to turn off all the shit one doesn't want in Word?

It's irritating to have an American app suggest correct use of English, let alone its desire to correct my grammar.

[Sudosu]

So, Essentially...

"All your resources are belong to us!"

- Microsoft Word

PS - Take that Word readability score!

[Andrew Scott]

BTW, should have mentioned onlyoffice. not quite as quick to open, but i like having a single window with spreadsheets and documents in separate tabs. nice feature.

[Sudosu]

Is my mind that broken; that I immediately thought of OnlyOffice as a website where you go watch people type naughty things.

Oh yeah use that Interrobang...

[ShortLegs]

Many moons ago, when people used to "race" their PC and rank it against others, and when new processors delivered a meaningful and discernible increase in speed, I used to bet my PC was faster than anyone else's, and would stake it in a race. Rather than benchmarks, it would be a real world test: from a cold boot, load word processor, type a letter, and print it.

I omited to state that I was using a C64 with EasyScript loaded from cartridge.

The question of why our PCs seem slower is not new... he's an article from almost 20 years ago asking the same question

https://web.archive.org/web/20080723121038/http://www.ukcentral.co.uk/technology/technology/going-slower-to-go-faster.html

[Sudosu]

Upvote for EasyScript!!!

I think I still have it somewhere in my pile :)

[anthonyhegedus]

Here we go again

Microsoft adding something nobody asked for... again!

We support hundreds of computers and slow loading of Word isn't something we've ever been told about. Whilst it certainly used to be the case with older computers running Windows XP and sporting a spinning rust hard drive, I wouldn't have thought it's top priority here.

But then they have a history of trying to "boost" things with pre-loading rather than actually making the code efficient. Like Windows "fast start" that changed the utility of turning-it-off-and-on-again forever.

And I'm pretty sure usage of Word has decreased in recent years anyway.

So yes, well done Microsoft, you've failed to read the room... again!

[BasicReality]

Because they can’t actually just fix Word.

[Anonymous Coward]

So rather than fixing the slow Office startup switch it to making the OS slower to startup.

Personally unless it's critical to the basic function of the machine I want NOTHING to autostart with the OS.

Can someone please 'poison' MS' development AI so it doesn't come up with these stupid ideas?

[anderlan]

Backward com-trap-ability?

I suppose it's difficult to do a rewrite when you're determined as hell to lock people into an ancient format? Lock-in chains down both user and vendor, as freedom frees both.