Linux news

2007 05 15

Office 2007 Money-grabbing and Lockins Exposed

Crushed by the Wheels of Industry [Lockin and Greed]

"I'll just convert these back to the .DOC format the older versions use. That's most likely the version you have at school." I told her. But when I read the files in Word 2007 and eventually found the "Save As" entry in the new menu system I discovered to my horror it was grayed out. "This feature is only available in the full version of Office 2007." popped up a helpful little message. "Click here to purchase it." Getting increasingly worried, I decided to try a more desperate measure. I selected the whole file and looked for the "Copy and Paste" option. I might lose the formatting this way, but at least I'd get the text of the essay she'd written. Copy and paste were disabled in the same way, and with the same message.

http://s5h.net/u?zc252
Using one user to force others to 'upgrade'. More predatory secrets come to light. Related:

Having heard that Vista's CD/DVD burn utility by default uses a nonstandard format, possibly as a result of yet another one of Microsoft's lock-in schemes, I decided to check things out for myself. That would also give me a nice chance to see what Vista was all about. The plan was simple: 1. Locate a Vista box, 2. Bring empty CD's plus some arbitrary files on a USB stick, and 3. Burn CD's in several ways while making screenshots. As it turned out, the planning was the simplest part by far. The rest is best described as a tale of frustration.

http://s5h.net/u?zfb84
DVD Burning Problem in Windows Vista

The hardware install went fine. However I soon ran into problems with the software install. The drive included OEM versions of Nero and Power CD both programs are (or were) it seems incompatible with Vista. This I'm finding is an increasingly common problem and very frustrating. I don't know who is to blame for this, Microsoft or the developers, but almost all the software I've tried to install had thrown up some problems. iTunes is particulalry frustrating but thats another issue. [...] I then realised that hidden away in the burn DVD dialog box is an option to change the default formating of the disk.

http://s5h.net/u?za66d