News MS to offer free Office Starter Edition

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/10/09/ms-to-offer-free-office-starter-edition/1

Microsoft has announced that a "limited functionality" version of Office 2010 will be available pre-loaded on OEM PCs, supported by an advertising framework.

 

This makes me wish that openoffice was more widely known....

 

Fine with me, as long as they will not throw adds in the middle of my text. If they display them somewhere in the program - why not.

 

office 2003 was very much comparable with OO however i think 2007 went miles ahead of it and is easily worth the £50 to buy it

 

hang on a sec does this mean they have finally gotten rid of works!!!

 

I really hope so. Really, REALLY hope so!

 

ms works was rubbish, i think i last used it in the windows 3.11 days or windows 98

 

Open Office is the answer. I can't imagine buying another MS Office ever again.

 

That's the idea behind the Starter Edition.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. If the full Office edition really is installed by default and requires just a keycode to activate it/upgrade, then I'm more than happy to let the open source community crack it and spread the joy.

 

the advertisong is mild, i use microsoft office accounting 2009, the free one

there is an upgrade button, and when you want to do certain things the free one cant it advises you to ugrade for more options

 

Good news... Microsoft cancels Microsoft Works - as reported by TrustedReview

 

Please, don't put 'stealing' and 'open source' in the same sentence - open source community is against stealing, especially when it comes to stealing your rights.

On-topic - looks like Microsoft feels a bit uncomfortable with OpenOffice getting more and more users.

EDIT: ofcourse when I say 'stealing' I mean 'crack and give away'

 

LMFAO! this is hilarious. Open Office is the most useless piece of hippee anti-microsoft lovin' nonsense.

Nice one Microsoft, shutting down OpenOffice with one easy free giveaway! Well Done!

 

I don't think it's Microsoft goal to compete with Open Office... but rather compete with Core Word Perfect and other office suit that require purchasing. If they wanted to aim at Open Office they would render Word Pad more complete and provide Excel Lite to Windows 7, without any ads in them.

 

Pro MS much? I bet you have never even used OpenOffice, if you had you would see that it is a perfectly usable and great FREE office suite.

Before you call me a hippy, I use office 2007 and I love it, but when I use my eee I use OpenOffice on it and for general word processing there is nothing wrong with it, the spreadsheet program is also pretty good.

 

whats the difference between 2007 and 2010

 

They are many article on the net about Office 2010.
I was invited to Microsoft Office 2010 Tech Preview and I can say it has Win7 integration, it's in 64-bit, it seams faster to open to me, ribbon bar is pass all over each application of Office, Groove has been renamed to SharePoint, bug fixes, able to save into PDF, ability to customize the ribbon bar as you want (including creating your own tab), OneNote is now perfectly usable for laptops, and no longer Tablet PC exclusive, and easier to use as well, and much more.

 

ah cool.. thanks

 

It's about time. What next? 3D effects in PowerPoint? **yawns**. They're still playing catch-up with OpenOffice.

 

My Microsoft Office 2000 (yes you read that right) works just fine and I have no plans on upgrading until I go off to college