cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)

On Mon, 6 Aug 2007 07:35:00 -0400, "Mike Hall - MVP"

>I don't dual boot. By using BIOS drive priority, each installation sees the
>other as just a data drive. I am careful not to use XP utilities on the
>Vista drive..

O..K.. IKWYM in terms of not trying to shell XP-era Boot.ini within
Vista's boot management or using an add-on boot manager, but as the
two OSs can still see each other's volumes, I'd expect to hear that XP
was eating Vista's shadow copies.

Or do you exclude the Vista HD from XP's System Restore?

>MS Office 2007 is a good product. I recognize that the first view of the
>ribbon is daunting because users are not used to seeing any of the functions
>available when any of the apps first open. If one looks at the ribbon as a
>drop down menu laid on its side, acceptance becomes much easier.

That's the "aha!" moment, yes, and I was pleasently surprised how
quickly my publisher/editor clients "got" that (especially as they
don't consider themselves "computer literate", but I've become used to
women who underestimate their technical prowess)

>It takes up a little over 800mb on my system (Treesize Pro), compared to the
>550mb of Office 2003. Yes, there is a difference, but as I said, the preview
>feature alone makes 2007 worthwhile, IMHO.

I don't see MS Office installations as often as I used to, but as I'm
retrofitting WinDirStat to PCs I see, I'll look at MS Office
footprints, correlating these with edition and version.

I'll start on my own two PCs...

XP SP2 with MS Office 2003 Pro + SP2 + 15 updates
- 289M in its subtree
- 20M in Common Files, Office11
-> 309M

Vista64 with MS Office 2007 Enterprise + PDF add-ons
- 614M in its subtree in Program Files (x86)
- 70M in Common Files, Office12
-> 674M

So yes; not as bad as I remembered (where did "1G" come from?).

>OEM manufacturers frustrate me to death with their insistence in supplying
>budget systems which they know full well will perform badly

I'm a small-volume OEM, and it is MS who insist I supply my generic MS
Office 2007 as an installed footprint with NO installation disks.

Not only that, but a few months ago, I saw a supplier's email that
referred to the current price of the installation disks (no license,
sold separately, I'm supposed to swallow the cost in return for the
priviledge of selling MS Office 2007) as an "introductory special
offer", due to go up from about US$ 10 to US$ 150.

I'd never seen the pack described as a "special offer" on any of the
three supplier's price lists that I receive regularly. I emailed my
lead on this, heard nothing, and assumed I was mis-informed after my
suppliers responded "huh?" as well.

This week's supplier price list shows the price is now indeed US$ 150.

IMO, this kind of cheap trickery is disgusting, and I do not intend to
recommend or sell MS Office 2007 in future, because it is beneath the
standards I set for myself as a system builder.

That means if my clients want it, they can either buy their PC
somewhere else, or they can pay retail price for it (thus blowing out
the cost with respect to the free Open Office they already have).

It's time we pinned down the "OEM Blues", which is normally ascribed
to greedy loyalty OEMs compelling Microsoft to buckle on standards.

In my direct experience in this case, it is MS who compells the OEM to
sell diskless air-boxes, creating an artificial dependency on the OEM
("oh please, OEM, re-install my software for me, after I followed
advice to 'just' wipe and re-install because of a virus"), not to
mention forcing repeat sales of the same license at full retail price.


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Never turn your back on an installer program
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