Filed under: Business, News, Windows, Office, Productivity, Microsoft, Commercial
Microsoft: Please buy Office 2003 ... pretty please?
by Marc Perton Jul 21st 2005 at 12:58PM
As Microsoft gears up to release the next version of Office sometime late next year, the company is facing a problem: most of its customers still haven't upgraded to Office 2003, the most recent version of the suite. The Register reports that just 15% of PCs are running Office 2003; Microsoft likes to have at least 50% of customers up-to-date before shipping a new version. Microsoft plans to address this with a marketing blitz, as well as a campaign to get third party developers to release and promote add-ons for Office 2003. The big problem, of course, is that most users haven't felt a compelling need to upgrade. "There are hundreds of millions of people who have been using this product for three to five years and if they haven't discovered the stuff they need to do what they need by now, then you can't hit them in the face with it,"analyst Paul DeGroot told the Register. Microsoft may also want to reconsider its pitch: somehow, it doesn't seem like calling your customers dinosaurs for running three-year-old software is really the best way to get them to upgrade.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ajp2116 said 2:46PM on 7-21-2005
Maybe, people would acutally buy Office 2003 if it wasn't so expensive. Why pay hundreds of dollars if you can download OpenOffice.org for free and it has almost all of the same features except for the Micro$oft 'Tech Support' that you still have to pay for. If you ask me, if you have an older version of Office, stick with it unless you really 'have' to get a recent version. And if you can do without the Micro$oft name, use OpenOffice.org
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Jason Clarke said 3:25PM on 7-22-2005
Marc, I couldn't agree with you more. The first time I saw one of the ads on this theme, it left a really bad taste in my mouth.
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Lucidix said 11:22PM on 7-21-2005
Yes i agree or you can do what the other... 10 seeds and 156 something leechs do and steal it.
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Tom Biro said 11:54PM on 7-21-2005
My OpenOffice does just fine for me, and except for my wife and friends going "Where the heck is Word???" when they hit up my laptop, no worries from me. Were you expecting WordPerfect?
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Ben Hollis said 2:26AM on 7-22-2005
Your picture reminds me - that ad campaign is downright awful. I've been horrified by it ever since it first appeared. Microsoft is associating its product with "dinosaurs" and suggesting that people should adapt to Office's capabilities, instead of Office adapting to help you work better. Whoever did this campaign should get the pink slip.
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Tris Hussey said 9:08AM on 7-22-2005
I have Office 2003 and frankly haven't seen any real improvements over Office 2000 or Office XP. The ONLY reason I'm running Office 2003 is that I got it as a free upgrade when I bought Office XP.
I concur with OpenOffice. If it weren't for some lingering wierdness with track changes and a few other things, I'd make the total switch.
Now that OpenOffice, even the 2.0 betas, is a real viable alternative to MS Office, MS is going to have a very hard time getting people to fork over several hundred dollars for an upgrade.
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Nicole Simon said 9:06AM on 7-22-2005
Actually, I have bought an Office 2000 at home. I saw Office 2003 and hated the look and feel.
I have had to work with an Excel 2003 at work (it is my main tool). I was very pleased that I could turn it back to Excel 97 - I even can't stand the ui changes in Excel 2002 for daily live.
So there will be no way I am updating to an 2003 - and it will be the question if I even will do for an 200x.
Give me new features I really love to see, which where not in the question until now (see RSS etc) == give me a reason to switch. Otherwise I won't.
Oh and as Office 2003 has speach recognition built in: I have not tested it, but I assume, I am better of staying with my (ugly but payed) Office 2000 at home and invest in Dragon Natural speaking. Could be cheaper.
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Garrison said 6:07PM on 9-13-2005
I've used everything from Office 95 to present, and I can't think of even one useful feature I have now that wasn't in the older versions. (When I say "useful", I mean ones that I use, ever.) If Microsoft wants to hang on to its user base, it needs to innovate - now there's a new idea!
By the way, I think OpenOffice could stand to innovate too - it's never going to get more users unless it has really attractive features that are unavailable in Office.
P.S. I can't believe they're just now adding an RSS reader to Outlook, and calling it a "feature". That should've been in there years ago!
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