iTWire: “Why Office 2007 Won’t Sell”
Stan Beer of iTWire writes Why Office 2007 won’t sell.
“When users upgrade to a new computer, it will come pre-installed with Vista so they have no choice there. However, new computers don’t come pre-loaded with Office 2007 and users will happily stick with Office 2003…
After spending money on a new computer and almost as much again on Vista, users will have a choice of spending hundreds more on a fancy revamped version of the Office they already had, which has a substantial learning curve attached to it. Or they can opt to install a compatible free open source version such as OpenOffice.org 2.0”
Choice in the software marketplace–it’s a new paradigm!
Beer concludes: “The point is there are now real alternatives to paying for an expensive upgrade to Office 2007 and the open source desktop office offering Open Office.org is probably the most viable. Until now, the open source crowd have not been as vocal as they could be. The question is can they get the message out to businesses and the consumer that they no longer have to pay for office productivity software? If they can, Office 2007 is going to be a hard sell.”