"Wronghorn"

[Mac Medic]

Good to see M$ are spouting the same old same old.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107_2-5108026.html

[Force Flow]

Oh wonderful. Sounds like we will all but have to sell our souls to M$.

And I was hoping for M$ to do something right for a change. Guess that's too much to hope for. :p

[DragonNOA1]

Some things never change, including $M and its dominating, kill all the competition, no one lives but itself. There is no game (among other things) if there is only $M. Its just not right.

[kobalt58]

M$ is definitely a monoploy. If only a major computer provider like Dell or Gateway said they would put the latest windows on thier computers, or atleast offer older versions for a discount, then that might spur some change in M$

[glc]

I'll stick with Windows 2000 and Office 97 till they plain old don't work any more. I need GOOD reasons to upgrade, and I sure haven't seen any yet. I have customers with everything from Win95 through WinXP, and Office 4.2 through Office 2003, and the 2K/97 combo causes the least issues, followed closely by 2K/2K, the only reason to pick Office 2K over Office 97 would be Outlook - Outlook 97 is terrible but 2K is pretty decent.

The 2K/97 combo will also run acceptably on a 233 MHz machine with 128mb ram and a 4gb hard drive - and leave room for quite a few other apps. Can't do that with anything newer.

I don't want to give M$ any ideas, but the single thing they could do to force people to upgrade is change the file compatibility again - like they last did with the introduction of Office 97. 97 will read any newer Office file except Access and Publisher - they seem to change that with each version.

[doctorgonzo]

2K/2K here. Another reason that Office 2K is better than 97 is Access 2K. Since I use it a lot, it makes a difference, but if all I were using was Word, then it wouldn't matter. I don't know why anybody would pay for a newer version of Office.

[Force Flow]

For stability and general use performance, 2k/2k has been one of the best combos in my experience.

[glc]

True - Access 2K is a lot nicer than 97.