From: Mike '/m' 


The version of MS Office I use (MS Office '97) has all the features I need
(and then some) and does not harass legal users.

 /m




On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 15:33:46 -0400, "Rich Gauszka"
 wrote:

>Being constantly inundated by Office WGA checks or just switching? Looks
>like people have got the message and will switch.
>
>http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4054/53/
>
> Microsoft Office users ready to jump ship: poll
>Microsoft may want to rethink its intention to inundate users of pirated
>versions of Office with unwanted alerts. A recent poll shows most users are
>likely to defect to the free open source equivalent, Open Office.org, rather
>than pay for Office 2003.
>
>
>
>An iTWire poll taken in the past day asked the question: "Would you try Open
>Office.org instead of buying MS Office 2003?"  Of the 441 respondents which
>voted in the space of 18 hours, 381 (86.4%) voted yes while just 60 (13.6%)
>voted no.
>
>Microsoft believes it will be able to convince pirate Office users to pay to
>upgrade to legitimate versions through its proposed Office Genuine Advantage
>(OGA) program. OGA, modelled on the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program,
>which Microsoft claims has been a success over past months, identifies users
>of pirate copies of Microsoft software when they download the necessary
>critical security updates. Once identified, Microsoft sends continual alerts
>nagging users to chuck their illicit software and pay for the real thing.
>
>While WGA may have been a success, however, there is one big difference
>between sending users verbal barrages to pay for Windows and sending similar
>alerts to Microsoft Office users.  The difference is that Microsoft Office
>2003 users can easily download Open Office.org 2.0 and be up and running
>with a similar product, with a similar look and feel and all their data and
>functionality intact, for absolutely free. So most would prefer to give that
>a try rather than shell out hundreds of dollars for MS Office.
>
>With Windows, however, the story is radically different. To date, there has
>been no viable alternative to Windows XP that would enable users to switch
>painlessly to an equivalent operating environment - the efforts of Novell,
>Red Hat and others notwithstanding. Thus, the only choice is to receive
>continual alerts or pay up for a genuine copy of Windows.
>
>This of course presents a huge problem for Microsoft because about one third
>of its revenue comes from MS Office sales.
>

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