scott wrote:
>> OTOH, M$'s products aren't exactly "cheap", by any stretch of the 
>> imagination.
> 
> I don't think paying 2x-3x the price of a game for your OS and Office 
> suite is expensive, and I guess most other people don't either.

I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lot.)

>> I think what most people really object to is paying vast sums of money 
>> for a product that isn't actually all that good. Let's face if, when 
>> you run KLogic and it crashes for the 18th time, you think to yourself 
>> "oh well, it least it didn't cost me anything". If you paid £400 for a 
>> piece of software and it behaved the same way, you'd be pretty upset.
> 
> Agreed, but my Windows or Office doesn't crash 18 times, and I didn't 
> pay 400 pounds for it :-)

Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
day. :-P

Also...

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/123456

M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

Pretty close, considering I guessed the number off the top of my head. I 
see Vista is currently selling for £180 or so.

If you think that's "cheap", then good for you. To me, that seems 
seriously steep. Hell, the super-dupa-ultra-mega edition of Nero only 
costs £40 or so, and everybody complains about how over-priced that is.

> However we did pay 10 thousand pounds for some CAD software, and that 
> crashes occasionally (which is infinitly more often than the OS!).

OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of

- There aren't any better products to choose from.
- Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.
- We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, I'd 
be *pissed*! o_O

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Invisible wrote:

> 
> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
> day. :-P
> 

heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"

-- 
~Mike

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>> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
>> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times per 
>> day. :-P
> 
> heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
> documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"

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Invisible wrote:
>>> Windows itself usually doesn't crash much if at all, provided you're 
>>> careful with it. But Office? I've seen it crash more than 18 times 
>>> per day. :-P
>>
>> heh. I think Word has a hidden option named "Automatically corrupt 
>> documents as they are saved to make them irrecoverable"
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 

I remember that one :)

heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to 
pieces as it saved. :/

-- 
~Mike

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> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I wrote 
> a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to pieces 
> as it saved. :/

Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our products 
in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted ones.  It's not 
like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, photos, embedded 
CAD drawings, cross-references etc.

What version of Word is that you're using?

Did you try the "Open and repair" option and then resave it?

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scott wrote:
>> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
>> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
>> wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it 
>> to pieces as it saved. :/
> 
> Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our 
> products in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted 
> ones.  It's not like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, 
> photos, embedded CAD drawings, cross-references etc.
> 
> What version of Word is that you're using?
> 
> Did you try the "Open and repair" option and then resave it?
> 
> 

2003 I think.. yep. Open and Repair killed all the formatting and 
jumbled half the content. :) I was able to piece it together and 
reformat ... eventually .. but it seriously hosed the document.

-- 
~Mike

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> 2003 I think.. yep. Open and Repair killed all the formatting and 
> jumbled half the content. :) I was able to piece it together and 
> reformat ... eventually .. but it seriously hosed the document.

And after that did it get corrupted again?

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> heh seriously, it seems like any time I work on a non-trivial document 
> more than the average letter Word begins corrupting the document. I 
> wrote a huge document for an API I created, only to have word chew it to 
> pieces as it saved. :/

I used to write all my assignments with Word at college, and at uni. 
However, one time Word *ate* my assignment, 20 minutes before the handin 
date. (No, *obviously* I didn't have a backup. You don't expect a 200K 
file on a network drive to suddenly go down like that just because you 
make a few spelling alterations.)

 From that day forth, all my assignments were written in HTML. (Or later 
LaTeX.)

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scott wrote:

> Funny, we work continuously on 100+ page spec documents for all our 
> products in Word, and I don't recall ever having see any corrupted 
> ones.  It's not like they are simple, they are full of diagrams, tables, 
> photos, embedded CAD drawings, cross-references etc.

This defies belief.

It has been my experience that as soon as you ask Word to do anything 
remotely nontrivial, it slows to a crawl, produces gigantic files, and 
eventually starts to function eratically (e.g., sections of text being 
duplicated, random formatting changes, deleted text "moving" to other 
parts of the document, etc.)

Quite how you could produce really *large* documents with it I have no 
idea...

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> I've yet to meet anybody who thinks MS's prices are reasonable. (OTOH, 
> everybody wants things to be cheaper, so I guess that's not saying a lot.)

Yeh, a significant proportion of the population use price as the only 
criteria when buying anything.  They will go into a shop and buy the 
cheapest vacuum cleaner, the cheapest washing machine, then go and buy the 
cheapest car insurance, the cheapest food at the supermarket, etc.  Trying 
to make a quality service or product for these people is just a waste of 
time, they won't spend the money...

> M$ Office 2007, full package, £350.

...but some people do (usually if they are a company) and so companies need 
to take advantage of this.  Notice how the "home" version of Office 2007 is 
60 pounds but the full version is 350 like you said.  What's the difference? 
The 6x price increase certainly doesn't seem to be justified, but I suspect 
that way it makes the most money for MS overall.

> Pretty close, considering I guessed the number off the top of my head. I 
> see Vista is currently selling for £180 or so.

Again, people who actually pay for this themselves have a much cheaper 
option, whereas people who don't care so much about money get stung for a 
way more expensive option.  It happens everywhere, not just in software.

> If you think that's "cheap", then good for you.

It seems completely in-line with other software available, which I assume 
has kind of settled down to the market price.

> OK, that's pretty lame. I'd ask why you don't go use a better package 
> instead, but I suspect the answer is going to be some combination of
>
> - There aren't any better products to choose from.

More specifically, the good things about the package we have far outweighs 
the fact that it crashes sometimes.  And the other packages probably crash 
sometimes too :-)

> - Our clients use this product and we need to be compatible.

Yes.

> - We've bought it now so we can't get our money back anyway.

True, but we still have to pay around 3K a year for maintenance.

> If I paid that amount of money for something that didn't work right, I'd 
> be *pissed*! o_O

I don't think they expect individuals to buy their software...

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