[hblug] The docx problem

[t94xr]

chris morris wrote:
> Don't know if anyone here has experienced this, but twice now I have 
> been sent M$ Office documents in a docx format and twice I've been 
> unable to do anything with them.
> OpenOffice wont open them, nor will MS Word (03)
> It seems M$ has set the default document type on Office 2007 as .docx
> When people who buy new machines ( with Vista installed ) use the 
> pre-installed trial of Office2007 they end up saving their docs in 
> .docx format. Of course they all work properly on the host machine, 
> and on anything else that has Office2007 installed.
> But when they email these docs to others we cant use them.
> Its all well and good to ask people to save-as something else, but 
> many have no idea how to do that, or even know what your talking 
> about, they just hit the save button.
>
> Problems also occur when the trial of Office2007 expires. The user has 
> made all his/her documents in this random format and cannot access 
> them unless they buy Office 2007.
> Thats very close to extortion, but this sort of behavior from M$ 
> doesn't surprise me anymore.
>
> Chris


Well actually no, its not. there is a an option to save documents as 
Word Document 97-2003 format. I now prefer saving my files as docx, 
anyway since most of the systems I work on, are Office 2007 installations.

And most of the software you purchase on newer computers are trials, 
trial Norton products, trial games, perhaps Norton are doing the same 
with their security suite.
Its the computer manufactuers who are messing people around. A person 
buys a computer, they sell it with Office 2007 and Norton Internet 
Security 2008 only to find when they have purchased the computer, the 
software they thought they were getting with it are only trials and they 
have to purchase a new copy of Office 2007 and buy another copy of 
Norton Internet Security.
All on their new laptop that has Vista Home Basic, with 512MB RAM.

And I know exactly what im talking about because I've had to sort this 
out for numerous business contacts I have, who have recently upgraded to 
a new laptop with Vista. All of whom required Office, hense Office 2007 
and then had to fork out an extra $76 for 2GB of DDR2 ram for their 
laptop where they just finished paying $1,200 for.

Cameron W