Re: So instead of upgrades, they'll start selling downgrades?

CobraBoy (tbyars@earthlink.net)
Sun, 19 Jan 1997 23:10:39 -0800


At 10:57 PM 1/19/97 PST, you wrote:
>
>http://www5.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_619.html
>declares that "This is the last time Microsoft will get away with it" -
>that people aren't going to want FAT software anymore after this one
>last hit of Office 97. (see article enclosed, below)
>
>But this confuses me. Is the implication that people are not going to
>buy a new version of any type of office suite software (except when they
>buy new machines), or is it that people will pay money to "downgrade"
>their office suites (the opposite of paying for an "upgrade")? I'm not
>seeing a clear business strategy for Microsoft to migrate from fat to
>thin software and keep everyone compatible with everyone else. Or is
>this one of those things that, as they say, puts the "backwards" in
>"backwards compatibility"?
>

Well believe it or not Ms has been selling downgrades for the Mac for
awhile now. How it works is this. Let's say you buy Office for the Mac or
whatever they call it, or Ms Word 6.0. Well Ms 6.0 on the Mac absolutely
sucks. Let me repeat that, it SUCKS. So your talking to your buddy and he
laughs at you and says, "sheesh Adam, everybody knows that you run Word
5.1a on a Mac. It's a lot better." And you say, "but I have a PPC." He
says, "doesn't matter, Word 5.1a runs better on a PPC than Word 6 native
PPC."

So you call Ms and ask how do you get Word 5.1a. They tell you for the mere
price of $49.95 they will downgrade you to Word 5.1a.

Microsoft just absolutely sucks. And if Apple has any balls that will be
their new ad slogan.

Tim

--

It's getting very bad, boys. We don't blow up trucks anymore. Hell, we don't even drive trucks anymore. We drive simple little Japanese cars with air bags. In the old days we used to rip out the seat belts and fly through the windshield ready for action. "Thrown from the car." Remember that phrase in accident reports? Always the sign of a very macho driver. ...Denis Leary

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