Re: After Installing a Partner Version of Office 2007, office 2003 says not Genuine

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  Hi

  Just an hour ago I encountered the same sort of problem.

  I installed my old Office XP 2002 into my new laptop (XP Pro - I refuse to be a Microsoft guinea pig for the debugging of Vista or Office 2007 and to pay top dollar for the privilege for the fourth or fifth time or is it six or even seventh?)  It had an Office  2003 trial version preinstalled that announced that I do not have to uninstall it when loading a different MS Office suite. Hence I did not waste my time uninstalling it.

  The validation tool duly noted that the Office XP was validated and the 2003 trial version was not. It then proceeded to block updates to Office  XP.

  This is a simple bug in the program that is a result of Microsoft's attempt at a simple verification program. The validation flag within the validation software is very obviously  turned off by any occurrence of an unverified Office program so that the update download management software does not have to be programmed with added features to distinguish between the myriad prior versions of MS Office.

  This was another foolish decision prompted by the advancing "piracy" paranoia engulfing the software biz as it faces the reality of economic  laws: the reduced marginal value to the consumer of incremental improvements to the software (added features have lower value than those provided previously), that were won at an increased marginal cost of integrating each additional feature with all of the prior ones. Ricardo could have told this to MS management 150 years ago. The result is that MS is increasingly resembling GM in the 90s.

  The cognitive error of the decision makers at MS was that people who have unvalidated copies of MS software (which MS throws around in "trial software", and creates by providing only a hard copy of the software validation code; the "COA" which gets lost when equipment is sold into the used market with valid licenses but no hard copies to prove it) are crooks and must be punished by having them prohibited from updating, if not having raiding parties sent to their abodes to shoot them on sight - despite having a paid for and validated a licensed copy.

  I will uninstall the trial version of Office 2003 hoping that it won't kill the installation of Office XP (which it will). All MS has achieved is another further disgruntled customer who already downloaded OpenOffice and will learn how to use it soon enough. I also used the Lotus suite for a while, but never mastered it (though at the time there was nothing useful to me in the  MS suite that was not available in the Lotus Suite).  This will occur millions of times to others, who will eventually migrate to software  providers who don't view their clients as thieves in the face of proof of legitimate license, and who don't expect to obtain 500 bucks for $40-$50 worth of improvement over prior software that is sufficiently functional for my non-collaborative uses, and  has been so since Office 97.

  I just wish MS management was aware of the enormous reduction in value of MS products for the customer who wastes his time on fixing problems induced by these buggy "anti piracy" features that have little or no value for MS and no benefit for the customer at all.

  As to the "lost sales" assumption scaring media and tech software makers, it should be obvious to them that the choices facing the typical user of bootleg software are between buying the hardware and the full price software and he is unlikely to afford both and is unaware of cheaper alternatives and fears they will be incompatible with the dominant (now legacy) formats of "doc" and "xls".  Particularly when the still useful $200-300 computer from eBay is expected by software producers to be populated by a $150-200 operating system and a $500 office suite, play dozens of $30 DVDs, and a hundred or more $17-20 CDs.

   

  Saturday, March 17, 2007 6:40 AM