‘Free’ ad-supported MS Works
p2pnet news | Advertising:- Can you use ‘free’ and ‘advertising supported’ in the same sentence?
Of course you can. The online biggies do it all the time.
Now Bill and the Boyz plan to offer a “free, advertising-supported” version of Microsoft Works (normally $40) as part of a test program with computers manufacturers, says Reuters.
Apparently, Microsoft has been, “pondering the future of Microsoft Works, its basic spreadsheet and word processing software, in the face of rising competition from Google Inc.’s suite of business software services,” says the story going on:
“Unlike Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which are delivered through an Internet browser, Microsoft plans to pre-install Works on computers and display advertisements stored in cache.”
Does that really mean pre-installed advertisements? Like it or not?
Aimed at students, “and other customers unwilling to shell out for Microsoft Office,” Works includes a word processor and spreadsheet along with several other applications. It lacks many of the advanced features in Office and uses different file formats than the .doc or .xls used by Word and Excel, says Computerworld UK, adding:
“Works 9.0 is already bouncing around on peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent.”
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Also See:
Reuters – Microsoft to test ad-supported version of Works, August 2, 2007
Computerworld UK – Is Microsoft preparing Works Online to take on Google Docs?, August 2, 2007
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August 2nd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
MS Works is using a closed binary format, at least previous versions of it did. And when you come to a computer lab, you find not MS Works, but, you guessed it – MS Office.
Better to use OpenOffice then (how to convince the sysadmin to get it to the labs is another issue).
August 3rd, 2007 at 12:44 am
Let ‘em have it. A hack to remove advertising would be published a few days after software… If anyone needs it at all, because it’s still easier just to download MS Office from torrent.
August 5th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
as a student who suffered from ms office and powerpoint in particular not converting nicely to openoffice a free version sound brill. and as ms works and ms office are compatible, you can correctly import ms works files in to office, some problems doing it the otherway but if you know how to change the file type you save to no problem.
all in all a half decent move by microsoft but then again if openoffice is installed on the computer it wins hands down.
August 7th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Hopefully this is just the beginning.
I would like to see MS do the Same for Office Standard (Word, Excel, Power Point) in an online format. Make it Part of Hotmail or something.
Nothing is worse than having to use MS Office at work and then have to buy it at home just so you can finish up a Presentation or a spreed sheet.
OpenOffice still needs a lot more work in the spreed sheet department. But as a word proc. it’s not that bad (better than Word Perfect)
Hopefully the next version will be out soon