New version lifts ban on Word in previous versions
First thing this morning, I threw a lawn chair in the car and headed out to my local big box retailer, prepared to sit in line waiting for the doors to open so I could make sure I could get hold of Microsoft Office 2010. Alas, that was all unnecessary as an ample supply of the shrink-wrapped software was on inconspicuous display on a shelf near the back of the store. If the product were Microsoft iOffice 2010, there might have been more excitement.
But while June 15 is the official launch of Office 2010 to consumers, it’s been available for business users for more than a month. For those businesses still deliberating whether to upgrade from Office 2003 or 2007, consider this: Office 2010 is free of a federal court injunction barring use of the Word 2003 and Word 2007 word processing program in those previous versions of Office.
A federal appeals court in Texas upheld in December 2009 a $290 million judgment against Microsoft in a patent infringement suit brought by a Toronto-based company called i4i. The plaintiff argued that Word’s custom XML feature violated i4i’s patent on the technology. An injunction barred Microsoft from selling Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word for Mac 2008.
After the appeals court ruled, Microsoft said, dismissively, that this “little-used feature” would be removed from future copies of Word, but that still leaves a large installed base of users with Word disabled in their Office suites.
As Office 2010 now ships on new desktop and laptop computers, although it needs to be activated by paying a separate license fee, businesses might want to consider this advantage that Office 2010 has over the older versions. It might also be an added incentive for businesses to upgrade the software on their existing hardware to Office 2010 and its injunction-free Word application.
Office 2010 with Word included could be attractive to IT people still wary of open source alternatives, such as Richard Parrish, chief technology officer of Wood County, Texas. Parrish, in an interview with my colleague Julie Bort earlier this year, was perplexed about what he could do in the wake of the injunction, as the county depended on Word to create forms for its court system.
“As I get new computers I can’t buy new copies of Word. We don’t know what we’re going to do yet. Are we going to move to Open Office?” he asked. Parrish answered his own question, noting that while the advantage of Open Office is that it’s free, “I’m not totally convinced about open source yet.”
Wood County has dabbled in open source, adopting a Linux-based program that’s compatible with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook for e-mail archiving. But despite Microsoft’s reputation for weak security, open source programs have their weaknesses, too.
A video game software vendor had to make an “embarrassing” disclosure this month that its Linux software was infiltrated by a backdoor Trojan.
For our IT staff readers out there, let us know if Office 2010 with Word included is going to nudge your organization toward investing in the new productivity suite.
