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View Full Version : So I went to Officemax and saw a copy of MS Office for 500 USD!



BWF89
December 13th, 2004, 09:39 PM
I "think" this was it \/
http://omximages.officemax.com/images/kreb_large/20654034.GIF
http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/pro...ckOID=537141049 (http://www.officemax.com/max/solutions/product/prodBlock.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&expansionOID=-536907353&prodBlockOID=537141049)

So I went to Officemax (an office supply store) yesterday and while my dad was looking for ink refills for our Cannon S520 printer I was looking at all the Microsoft products and one thing in particular caught my eye. They were selling a copy of Microsoft Office for...............get ready................ $500 USD!!! When I saw this I just stood there with a black expression on my face taking second and third looks at the price tag to make sure it said "500" instead of "50" but my eyes didn't lie. $500 USD for a copy of Microsoft Office. So I picked up the box and it said something like "By accepting the EULA aggreement you can only install this product on one computer" ONE COMPUTER!?!?

Can someone please explain to them how they can get away with selling their office for $500 when you can download Openoffice free off the net? Is there a big difference between the two or is just MS office the standerd so everyone feels the need to buy one eventhough it is ridiculously overpriced? I mean even if it did come with a few more things that Openoffice I think I could live without them for $500 per computer...

poptones
December 13th, 2004, 09:55 PM
I used to work phone support for GW. One of my favorite things was when someone would call in after having reloaded their system (usually for the bazillionth time) and couldn't find their license for their copy of office. They'd get furious when I'd tell them I couldn't do anything for them because the new versions don't have a generic PIN for authorization. Then I'd tell them to go to openoffice.org and download a fre version...

tee hee. The funnest part of phone support is subverting the system.

jdodson
December 13th, 2004, 10:15 PM
Can someone please explain to them how they can get away with selling their office for $500 when you can download Openoffice free off the net? Is there a big difference between the two or is just MS office the standerd so everyone feels the need to buy one eventhough it is ridiculously overpriced? I mean even if it did come with a few more things that Openoffice I think I could live without them for $500 per computer...

they can get away with it because corporations are so locked into office, moving away would be a painful proccess. they hold the cards when formats like .doc and .ppt and .xls are hard to decode for other programs. open office writer opens and saves .doc files very well, however it is not perfect, same for .xls files and .ppt files. the open office calc program is also not a very good excell replacement. the open office suite is great for new companies looking to save money and companies wanting to move away from the microsoft empire. i use it personally and love it, have been using it since staroffice 5.2. i think open office is a great app, i think the thing holding it back from more regular corporate use is compatibility, which is a big deal to corporations.

which is why i hate propietary file formats. if you didnt know all a .sxw or the default open office file format is is a zipped up bundle of xml files. test it out for yourself, unzip file.sxw. :mrgreen: