Microsoft Made a Big Mistake
Posted by Matt Johnson | 2007-10-22 00:06:09
A couple of months ago, Microsoft released Windows Vista and Office 2007. Obviously, its take up rate wasn't that great. Who would want to upgrade to a new OS when their old one works perfectly fine. I guess it doesn't always pay to make something good the first time!
Anyway, another reason I think the take up rate of Office 2007 has been so slow is because Office 2003, and Office XP can't read Office 2007 documents by default. Sure, the 2007 user can save it as a .doc, or the person with 2003 or XP can download the converter, but the fact is, not a lot of people know about that, and if they did, they are unwilling to make the effort.
As a student, I've taken a few online classes, and all the teachers say don't get Office 2007 because they can't open them. I remember one dude in my English class had to write his papers in Wordpad because he couldn't figure out how to save them properly in Word 2007. Do you think any of the students now want to upgrade to 2007?
Microsoft should have installed that Office converter on everyone's computer right off the bat. They made us download the anti-spyware tool, new IE, SP2, and a million updates. And they couldn't throw in a converter to save millions of people's time? They could have at least, when the .docx file was clicked on, offered a download link for the converter, but instead, Windows just pretends it doesn't know what the heck .docx means. That's just stupid!