[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-09-15 21:46 ]

Puntz,

I think you (and the article) in question are overreacting on this one a wee bit. The DRM (Digital Rights Management) options proposed for Office 2003 will, as far as I am aware, be entirely optional. That is when you create a document you will have the OPTION of protecting it to limit what other people can do with that document but you can also just save it as a normal document with no DRM set up. These normal documents will be readable by other software, previous versions, etc. The DRM stuff will essentially do what you can do now with products such as Adobe Acrobat - you can create documents which others can view but not edit, restrict their ability to cut and paste or print the document, etc. All this is done now but it is just a pain because you have to have 3rd party software to do it. It will certainly not stop us from sharing spreadsheets, documents etc.

The biggest problem for Microsoft is not Linux, it is getting people to upgrade. A lot of companies I do work for are still using Office 97 (I still have it on my laptop) simply because there have been no additional features added since then that justify the cost of upgrading for the majority of users. I think you will find DRM is just an attempt to get companies that are worried about the security of their documents to upgrade but most individual users will never even look at it.

__________________
"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson

[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-09-15 21:47 ]

[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-09-15 21:44 ]

Linix has become far more than a little fish.

Does anyone think Nasa or the US military use microsoft?

They use an uncrashable system called Linix.

Cheers.

[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-09-15 21:48 ]

[ This Message was edited by: puntz on 2003-09-15 21:43 ]