News - Microsoft to replace Works suite with Office Starter 2010

[HEXUS]

Office 2010 Starter Edition, a free, ad-supported version of Microsoft's upcoming Office suite, will ship with new PCs.

Read more.

[Splash]

Looking into my crystal ball I see this making next to no impact on the number of pirated copies of top end Office packages out there.

[scaryjim]

I dunno, depends on how heavily gimped the "Starter" editions are. If you get Word with most of its features intact I think that'll do for most people. Of course, if we could have an open standard for office application files, which everyone adhered to properly, this would be nothing of an announcement, but since most large corporations and public bodies are tied into Word and people like compatibility, this might make a lot more sense than Flogging works for next to nothing then enticing people to Office with trial versions.

The big question is: will it also be available as a free download...?

[Funkstar]

Looking into my crystal ball I see this making next to no impact on the number of pirated copies of top end Office packages out there.

I'm not so sure. People are going to see they have "Office", they are unlikely to care which version it is, as long as it looks the part and does the basics. And lets face it 95% of people are only going to use 5% of Office.

Everyone knows Works is terrible, and if someone is going to replace it with a pirate Office, it's going to be Ultimate of similar. No-one pirates the basic versions

[MSIC]

This might sound a bit predictable or something but...
OpenOffice 3.1 really is quite good you know!
If i'm asked to fix a laptop /PC which usually requires wiping i have no qualms about putting OpenOffice(.org) on it, unless the customer has a specific request or provided CD already. I've not had anyone complain (other than my wife who uses Excel day in-day out).

[jimbouk]

I wonder how much MS pay companies to put this on the machines? I assume there are significant Windows discounts for chucking adware on new machines which gives them 2 revenue streams (ad+upgrade). Open Office all the way - I can't stand M$ office at work

[Champman99]

That is surely the big market for this Office Starter, and it was Works big market too. Bundled Bloatware.

I cant imagine many people went into PC-World and actually asked, please can I have microsoft works - they just got it with their HP/Dell computer, then discovered it was absolutely terrible and went to PC-World to buy Office.

That's your average consumer... I'm sure most hexus readers wipe everything off a new buy and install openoffice or similar. Myself I have openoffice on most machines, and Office Enterprise (Student version) on my laptop.

Office Starter will be poor compared to OpenOffice or Lotus Symphony, but like has been said earlier, Hexus readers probably arent its intended market.

[baius]

Bundled Bloatware. ... I'm sure most hexus readers wipe everything off

Yep, just one more thing to uninstall (or another reason to immediately reinstall Windows when you get a new PC).

[Mike Fishcake]

It will also hopefully put an end to the people that argue that Word is built-in to Windows, and kick up a stink when it isn't installed on their cheap-as-chips bargain bucket PC.