[Thermodyne]

Jack Simth said:
One of the things Microsoft does that makes many people hate them:

Forced Upgrading by discontinuation and poor compatibility:
When MS produces a new versin of a program - Word, as an example - they stop producing and selling the previous versions; moreover, previous versions can't read later versions' format, unless the later version specifically saved the document into an older format. So, say you are a buisiness operating Word 97 on your 100 licensed workstations. Microsoft then comes out with Word 2000 and stops selling Word 97 licenses. Your buisiness expands a bit, and you need to outfit three new workstations. Unfortunately, you can't just put Word 97 on those three new workstations, as the license isn't available; you need to put Word 2000 on them, as that's all you can leagally get (without such measures as looking for people who are selling old copies of Word 97 licensing - wich can get rather tricky). Now documents made on those Word 2000 machines can't be read by the rest of the staff when needed - in order to make it work, the three Word 2000 stations must either always take an additional step (saving in the older format), or you must "upgrade" all 100 of the other machines. At $50 a unit for Word 2000 (I'm pulling numbers out of a hat), adding those three machines (let's say each machine costs $1000) cost you $3000 individually, but arranging them to actually work with the others in your system costs $5000 for upgrades.
Now suppose you are running a smaller buisiness that isn't growing significantly. You are running happily along with Word 97 on your five machines, and dealing with your clients. Then, Microsoft comes out with Word 2000, and stops issuing new Word 97 licenses. Now, if any of your clients upgrade, or get a new machine, you can't work with the files they send you, due to the wrong format, and you are basically left with a few options: Drop the client, Annoy the client (dude, I can't read that format - you have to save it in Word 97) (and probably lose the client, eventually) or upgrade your machines (for $50 apice that's $250).
Now note that Microsoft can do this at essentially any time they wish, with virtually any of their products, and almost any business must eventually cave, if using those MS products. In essence, the corporation can (and does, every few years) tax buisinesses at will, for whatever amount they choose. After all, Microsoft is the only entity that can leagally make new licenses for the use of Microsoft's products.
Currently, they are starting to move over to a subscription model, wherein you continually pay for the priviledge of using their products, and the corporation doesn't have to do a thing ever again to maintain your obligation to pay them. And the above tactics essentially gauruntee that, if nothing else changes, they will be able to force most buisinesses to go along with it.

New software always displaces older software. As to the problem of which you speak, it would take less than 5 minutes a system to default the three systems to Office 97 compatibility. Even Office 2003 can be defaulted to 97 settings. Again this would have to be laid at the feet of the users. A business with 100 workstations is actually an enterprise class business. As described, it would probably be Windows 98 or NT running in an NT domain. So it would be assumed that the MIS manager would have researched this and rolled it out at deployment. If it was a sneaker net, then they would already be ITdead with 100 systems. If they were running on WinProxy, Novell or one of the defunct network systems, then again, they should have known to make the changes before deployment. I can’t lay this at the feet of MS because user fail to learn what new software is capable of. I can say that planned obsolescence is bad, but such is life. Almost everything suffers from this.

Also, Office products stay in the vendor pipeline long after they have been replaced. And with that said now let me add that your example is vaporware. I can provide as many copies of Office 97 as an office of 103 systems needs at $112/copy. http://google-cnet.com.com/MS_Office...-30671582.html And I could probably throw in installation at that price if they were willing to sign a network support contract.