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by exmadscientist 23 days ago
Most companies didn't, no.

Just because alternatives exist for some people some of the time does not mean Office is worthless, or that buying it isn't rational.

(Though buying it starts to look a lot less rational when things like this happen.)
1 comments
isityettime 23 days ago
Most Microsoft purchases at a large organization are rational only because of how much the company has already sunk into Microsoft. Microsoft's strategy had never been centered on their software succeeding on its intrinsic merits.

Consequently the best part of not buying Microsoft's shitty software is that it spares you from "having" to buy their (other) shitty software.

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jmward01 23 days ago
> Microsoft's strategy had never been centered on their software succeeding on its intrinsic merits.

Microsoft used to build the best stuff. I'm not sure when that ended, I just remember the decline. I used to -jump- at release day for their latest OS version. Their dev tools were considered top tier and I used to like Word. Now every interaction I have with a MS product is painful and my trust in them is so far negative that I always assume the worst for every interaction. Wanna keep playing Minecraft without an MS account? We -promise- not to stop allowing you to do that after we buy it..... Want to use your computer without us advertising? Want to even use your computer without MS as a gatekeeper for your login? I have no idea why anyone would give them a dollar other than lock-in.

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ribosometronome 23 days ago
The span in which it would make sense to be keen on jumping to the latest OS pretty narrow.
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isityettime 23 days ago
I dunno what you're talking about. Even the "creation" of MS-DOS wasn't like that. When was Microsoft making the best stuff? When they were selling their version of Basic, before MS-DOS?
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olyjohn 23 days ago
XP was their first OS that required an activation code. Ever since then it's been downhill and things have only gotten worse.
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gucci-on-fleek 23 days ago
> Most Microsoft purchases at a large organization are rational only because of how much the company has already sunk into Microsoft. Microsoft's strategy had never been centered on their software succeeding on its intrinsic merits.

Microsoft has lots of crappy software, and I personally find MS Office rather irritating, but I'd still argue that it's the best office suite currently available. Like yes, it has lots of bugs and weird misfeatures, but all its competitors are either buggier or only have less than a tenth of the features that MS Office does.

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