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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 07/21/2010 Microsoft
tries to end the upgrade game with their cloud strategy
........ One of
the biggest complaints pc users have with Microsoft is
having to play the upgrade game. This is a 2 level game. Level 1 is that Microsoft has adapted the
auto industry’s habit of coming out with supposedly new models of
software every year or so. The
auto industry is on an annual new product cycle, while Microsoft has been on
about a 2 year cycle, starting with Microsoft Office 1.0 in 1990, Office 3 in
1992, Office 4 in 1994, Office 7
in 1995, Office 8 in 1997, Office 9 in 2000, Office 10 in 2002, Office 11 in 2003, Office 12 in 2007, and now Office 14 in
2010. The auto
industry really is coming out with some true innovations in their new models;
case in point the new Ford Focus I bought that has the Microsoft Sync technology
which definitely changes what a car is and how you use it. And cars are
getting much better mileage with each new model year. But with
the multiple versions of Microsoft Office programs, the constant hassle of
having to pay for upgrades and then install them, and then having to deal
with the 2nd level of the
upgrade game – having to install the various software bug-fix and
security patches, far outweighs the upgrade bang for the buck to many users. Case in
point Microsoft Word, which has been around for over 20 years now. Word processing used to be the # 1
task done on personal computers, before the internet age. Now I would guess
it’s been pushed to # 3, following email and surfing the web. And in
word processing, since its inception. most people
use less than a dozen functions of the programs. In the
earliest days of the PC industry, word processing programs were actually
simple text editing programs. You could create a letter and print it out. If
you wanted to get fancy, you’d have to know how to insert special codes
so that you could get something to print out in bold type. 3rd
party programs offered extra fonts, and the concept of having spell checkers
and grammar checkers, and eventually these features were incorporated into
all word processing programs. So today
most people know how to do 8 functions in a word processing program:
And
that’s all they do. So do you really think it’s worth going
through 14 upgrades of Microsoft Word – paying the initial and then the
upgrade fees, installing the new software versions, and installing the software
patches that fixed the unforeseen problems and security flaws in the software ? Most
users would say “ (Expletive deleted) No !!!!
“ Next week
I’ll talk about Microsoft’s plans to eliminate these costs and hassles
in their new cloud computing platform. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2010 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html Call: (509)624-7230 |
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