Microsoft Pays University $250K To Use Office 365 219
BogenDorpher writes "Microsoft has offered to give the University of Nebraska $250,000 dollars to make the switch from IBM Lotus Notes to Office 365, which they say offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings. Microsoft did this in hopes that the University would not make the transition over to Google Apps."
I already use Google Apps! (Score:2)
Gracious Outrage (Score:5, Funny)
At first I was outraged that Microsoft "discounted" (read: bribed) the uiversity to switch but then I realised that the students are probably grateful because
Lotus Notes is a horrible horrible piece of software. Microsoft might be evil but Lotus Notes is the scourge. I would happily endure a Windows only hell over a life of Lotus Notes.
IBM probably did this to the university to begin with, no system administrator would use Lotus Notes willingly.
Not very gracious (Score:2, Funny)
$250k is cheap like a whore, the vice chancellor probably gets paid more than that in a year. I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $2.5m, unless that bed had Lotus Notes in it.
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$250k is cheap like a whore, the vice chancellor probably gets paid more than that in a year. I wouldn't get out of bed for less than $2.5m, unless that bed had Lotus Notes in it.
Where do you work? I'll get out of bed for only $2m. Now, do you get this every time you get out of bed or is it just once a day? Also, if you have to get up during the night, does that count?
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Also, if you have to get up during the night, does that count?
Naw, you are on call.
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You were initially outraged because the university managed to negotiate some free services with their purchase?
Oh the travesty!
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Its anticompetitive. Intel did it once too.
Customers are supposed to buy products. They're not supposed to be paid not to use competing products.
If it was a discount then it's not the same thing. The summary sounds like the incentive was 250k of cash plus the product. That's not a discount. That's a bribe or anticompetitive behaviour.
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RTFA. The summary is an outright fabrication. (of course, so is the title of the article in question).
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RTFA. The summary is an outright fabrication. (of course, so is the title of the article in question).
Actually, the summary just quotes the introduction to the article. And, in the article, it states that the university is receiving funds from Microsoft to cover consulting and conversion costs.
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If I discount your purchase of my product because of competitive pricing by a market adversary, is that unethical? Because last time I looked, that's called "competitive pricing".... kinda like negotiating a better price at $BIGBOX_ELECTRONICS_STORE because you saw a deal at $ONLINE_ELECTRONICS_RETAILER. Which, btw, you can do, successfully, sometimes.
It was a discount. TFS is wrong, almost to the point of libel.
That said, since Microsoft took a quarter-million dollar hit in the "Expected Sales" column, and
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"The summary sounds..."
Really? really? you are going by the summary? what, are you new here? the summaries of ALL articles are bad and inaccurate, the summaries on slashdot are often wrong and something nonsensical in the context of that they link to.
Half the times the stories they link to our sensational PoS in and of themselves.
I don't know about this story, but basing a post on slashdot fro a summary is often folly.
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And you should learn to read before you speak.
MS didn't 'PAY' anyone anything ... unless by pay ... you mean gave them a discount ...
MS discounted the school $250k off the price they quoted them to perform the data conversion and import.
The school will still be paying MS very large sums of money and at no point will any of it be pointed in the direction of the school.
Learn the difference between a discount and pay off. The discount happens in pretty much every business.
Basically, Microsoft waived the 'ne
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I used PROFS/VM (and OV/VM) for a decade, and I've used Notes for almost seven years.
I preferred PROFS by a mile. It had space issues, sure, but at least it would send e-mail reliably and tell you when new messages were in your mailbox in a timely manner. Notes here is terrible ... there is sometimes a 10-15 minute delay between an internal mail being sent and being received, the "new mail" indicator triggers but I have to manually refresh to see the actual messages, etc.
Worst e-mail client I've ever used
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I had worked with Notes briefly, not as a corporate user but to integrate with it. And I rather liked it. There was no competition for it since no one did anything like it at the time. However I think a lot of people used solely for mail and a few side apps and thus they treated it like competitor with Outlook. But the Idea of Notes being used not for mail primarily, but as a conversation tracker was something I wouldn't mind seeing. It wasn't the easiest thing to customize but vastly simpler than Outl
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Who gives a small rat's ass how grateful the students might be? The students are in college for no other purpose than to learn how to solve problems. So - dump all the worst problems that all the buggy fucking software in the world can create, sit back, and see how the students solve the problems.
Being spoonfed a "solution" that one particular corporation finds to be profitable is NOT an education.
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You can, but exchange likes to mangle messages, for instance if you receive a plain text email exchange will create a very poor html copy of it too... This breaks things like encryption and signed mails.
It went a little something like this (Score:5, Funny)
University of Nebraska: "I don't care what the benefits are. You'd have to pay me to use Microsoft's Office 365."
Microsoft: [Takes out a checkbook.] "How much are we talking about?"
Or Perhaps ... (Score:2)
which they say offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings.
Microsoft: "It offers newer technology, greater flexibility, and operational savings."
University of Nebraska: "No it doesn't! It costs $249,999.99 more than Lotus Notes."
Microsoft: *slides check across the table* "There you go."
Be aware, no VBA macros in Office 365 (Score:3)
M$ is trying to get away with marketing unscriptable office apps once again (Office 365 doesn't support VBA macros).
What happened the last time they did this? Office 2008 for Mac dropped support for VBA macros. Customers complained mightily, and now it's back in Office 2011 for Mac.
There's only so much one can do with unscriptable office apps. M$'s new "ribbon interface" is hardly a breakthrough. Things only get interesting when users have access to automation and an easy-to-use programming language lik
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Microsoftie Bob: Hmmm, how can we get folks to migrate off of the next version of Office quicker?
Microsoftie Bill: I know! We'll disable VBA Macros. Folks will complain and we'll have more time to work on the code.
Microsoftie Bob: Yea, it worked for Vista!
[John]
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M$ is trying to get away with marketing unscriptable office apps once again (Office 365 doesn't support VBA macros).
Don't worry, it's online, there are way better options for scripting than VBA. There is always a better option than VBA. Javascript shines like a Grail-Shaped Beacon next to VBA.
Things only get interesting when users have access to automation and an easy-to-use programming language like VBA.
The explosion of things like Wordpress shows that not only would people rather download something pre-made than make it themselves, but there's also a commercial market for programmers willing to do the work and compete.
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Given how limited Office 365 actually is, compared to desktop Office (it's only feature-rich if you compare to Google Docs, really), I think that the lack of macros is not going to be a stressing issue for many users. They'll probably run into something else first.
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Duh... of course average users can, and will, easily use the ActiveX bindings of non-VBA languages to create cross-platform ways to automate repetitive tasks in their M$ Office apps. That's exactly what I had in mind. Thanks for setting me straight, AC.
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Do you even know what office 365 is?
Office 365 is:
That is literally all there is to it. They have tweaked the Web-app UIs to be branded Office 365 and put the whole thing behind a single sign-in portal, but you could set up the exact same service locally if you were a large business.
The more expensive plans also include subscription based access to the Office 20
Steve Ballmer.. (Score:2)
Re:Steve Ballmer.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballmer offers incentives. Gates dictated. I'll take Ballmer over Gates any day, because you can at least turn down Ballmer's incentives. If you stood up to Gates, you were destroyed.
I would contrast Sculley and Jobs in a similar manner, though not nearly so strong.
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If you stood up to Gates, you were destroyed.
God, how much of a pussy do you have to be that you're afraid to stand up to a boss?
Whats he going to do? FIRE YOU? Do you know anyone who has been turned down for a job because 'oh yea, and I stood up to bill gates and he fired me'? No, no one anywhere would give a shit.
This is America. You can find a job. No boss can 'destroy' you, only your fear will destroy you. Your boss is just a man, same as you (or female, but you get the point). If you're afraid of Bill Gates, you have bigger issues than any
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Yes, one is usually not destroyed by one's boss, no matter how much of an asshole he is. However, the competition was destroyed, and, as I'm sure you're aware, that's to what I was referring... though it was a good troll. I rate it 4/5. Would be trolled again. An asset to Slashdot! A++++++++
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Yeah, just like that stupid anti-competitive Apple has been doing with steep student discounts on their products since 1984!
Microsoft is getting a clue and going after their future market, just like Apple has always done.
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Yeah, just like that stupid anti-competitive Apple has been doing with steep student discounts on their products since 1984!
Microsoft is getting a clue and going after their future market, just like Apple has always done.
Ummm, the student discount on a Mac is like $50 or $100 depending on what model. That doesn't sound very steep.
Lotus Notes (Score:2)
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Limp Bizket was never cool.
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Lotus Notes is still around? (Score:3)
I'm not being sarcastic there, I haven't seen anyone using that since the 90's. I kind of put it in my "assumed they phased it out years ago" file right next to Novell Groupwise (found out not long ago they still make that too).
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For what it's worth.
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Lotus Domino (server) and Notes (client) are actually alive and well. This article is old, obviously, but you can see that Notes/Domino was slowly slipping until 2006 where it began to recover.
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/lotus-notesdomino-marketshare-is-growing [alanlepofsky.net]
These two pages show that the Notes/Domino combo is actually even closer to Exchange today than it was five years ago.
http://dominoorexchange.pbworks.com/w/page/18061910/FrontPage [pbworks.com]
http://dominoorexchange.pbworks.com/w/page/180 [pbworks.com]
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My employer used it (both non-tab and tabbed versions) until mid 2000s before going to Outlook.
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I was forced to use it two or three years ago for a couple of months after a merger. Thankfully everybody else said the same: Horrible, horrible, horrible.
But users are locked in -the same way as with MS: Proprietary file formats and APIs create a lot of inertia. It was quite a project to integrate that new group.
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nt (Score:2)
Wouldn't this count as a bribe?
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No, it's not since they weren't paying them to use it. It was a completely commonplace discount given to a big customer. Universities negotiate such discounts all the fucking time. The summary and article are FUD.
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No, it's not since they weren't paying them to use it. It was a completely commonplace discount given to a big customer. Universities negotiate such discounts all the fucking time. The summary and article are FUD.
According to the article, the university is receiving $250,000 in funds to cover consulting services for the conversion from Lotus Notes. So, it is only a bribe if you are paid to actually use it, but not if your are paid to make it so you can use it? I agree if Microsoft actually discounted the price of Office 365, that this is normal and happens all the time. However, if the university actually received funds as part of the transaction, then how is that not a bribe unless the only contractors involved
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Is a $2000 consumer rebate on buying a 2012 Pigmobile a bribe? Even if you actually take the money in hand, rather than having it applied as a discount on the purchase price? (Because, you know, the former is income to be taxed, whereas the latter might reduce sales-taxable purchase price (depending on jurisdiction).)
Or... and let's be honest here... is it evil because that convicted monopolist is doing it, and anything that they do to get any sale at the expense of any competitor is EVIL.
I swear. There see
Article is a lie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless my alarm company is also "paying me $300" by installing my monitoring equipment for free and 3 months of free service so I will then pay them a monthly, 2 year contract guaranteed amount of $30.
The University is paying for the service, but getting free services and a discount. Article makes it sound like Microsoft is paying them to use Office 365, which is untrue.
Simple. (Score:2)
$250k to compensate the college for trying out a new technology. I get the feeling that the university didn't really want to go to Google Apps anyways but used to as a bargaining chip with Microsoft. Organizations have done this before all the time. I don't know Boeing, Air Bus seem like a better deal. Or You know Ford we like those Chevy's for our fleet trucks. An educated consumer can really give those evil corporations a ride. (They just make all their money off of the stupid consumers)
Which University of Nebraska? (Score:2)
Paid for by Android (Score:2)
They have money to burn [slashdot.org] now. Still, if I was them, I'd put the money into a campus party, then use Google Apps anyways, which is free for universities.
Adobe vs Quark (Score:4, Informative)
This sort of thing happens in education. Software producers know they need to plan for future users so they give it to the kids who they hope will buy it. Some coworkers of mine at an advertising agency said their professor called Quark (makers of QuarkXpress) asking for educational discounts for 30+ licenses and were told there was no discount. At the time the license cost was something like $1200 per seat. So they called Adobe and asked for educational discounts on InDesign, new at the time, and Adobe just gave them everything they wanted at no cost.
Worked in their favor too. When those kids hit the working world they only knew InDesign and their employers were forced to switch. We did. And never looked back.
"Then Adobe hit the market in 1999 with a program called InDesign (now used by Inc.). In 2003, Adobe launched its Creative Suite, which rolled in products such as Photoshop and Illustrator with InDesign. Quark couldn't come close. Its U.S. market share tumbled from 95 percent to just 25 percent ."
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/can-quark-turn-the-corner.html [inc.com]
If you want to sell your product give it to the educators.
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This sort of thing happens in education. Software producers know they need to plan for future users so they give it to the kids who they hope will buy it. Some coworkers of mine at an advertising agency said their professor called Quark (makers of QuarkXpress) asking for educational discounts for 30+ licenses and were told there was no discount. At the time the license cost was something like $1200 per seat. So they called Adobe and asked for educational discounts on InDesign, new at the time, and Adobe just gave them everything they wanted at no cost.
Worked in their favor too. When those kids hit the working world they only knew InDesign and their employers were forced to switch. We did. And never looked back.
"Then Adobe hit the market in 1999 with a program called InDesign (now used by Inc.). In 2003, Adobe launched its Creative Suite, which rolled in products such as Photoshop and Illustrator with InDesign. Quark couldn't come close. Its U.S. market share tumbled from 95 percent to just 25 percent ."
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/can-quark-turn-the-corner.html [inc.com]
If you want to sell your product give it to the educators.
And yet all of those kids coming out of college knowing linux hasn't forced companies to switch to it. The reason that your example worked was because companies were not entrenched in QuarkXpress or InDesign at the time and therefore the kids coming out set the standard, not the companies. Apple tried the same approach with education - giving steep discounts to schools and universities on their equipment, but that didn't change the business market, at least not much. Why, because for all practical purpos
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If your employees are 25% faster using product B instead of product A, even if you have product A you buy product B.
And I would like to the availability of Linux is a significant part of the reason it has pushed traditional unixes out of business computing, and holds onto the lions share of internet facing servers. You may notice that the majority of people coming out of college don't know what Linux is, they use Windows. Those who know Lin
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There was a little more to it than that. Quark took YEARS before they released a native version for OS X, versions 5 and 6 were not big improvments over 4, those updates were years apart, and they got really, really behind in features, especially the quality of their typesetting engines. And since the other 2 parts of the Holy Trinity of desktop publishing were both Adobe apps (Photoshop and Illustrator), InDesign's integration with them (like being able to import layered Photoshop files, rather than requir
Sometimes... (Score:2)
You gotta hang the pork chop around the neck of your ugly baby to get the dog to play with it...
OMG Really?! (Score:2)
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Think of it as a marketing tool. If it is good students who have used it for 4 years will go on to promote it in business, at which time they will be laughed at, (or not).
Re:Want Failure? To the cloud! (Score:5, Informative)
No. RTFA. They discounted conversion services by $250k. The school is still paying for the product. This is commonplace in the industry.
"Sure, we want to swap from x to your product y, but it will cost us too much to transition"
"How can we help out so that we get a revenue stream from your subscription/maintenance (that still makes us money in the long run)?"
Who needs accuracy (though the linked story had the same inaccurate headline)?
Now there's an "innovative" way to calculate ROI (Score:2)
I suppose we'll soon enough see an endless stream of magazine ads including a "testimonial", about how Nebraska U. "saved" hundreds of thousands of dollars by "choosing" Office over IBM's product.
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Hey now! no need to go dragging your "facts" into this.
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I have, on multiple occasions seen licensing fees negotiated down to 1/3-1/2 initial asking price on more than just Microsoft products. It is no crime.
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Considering that they are going to pay 1/2 the yearly licensing fee, umm... yes, we will and it's true.
Umm... No. They'd be saving money compared to if they didn't get a subsidy and all other details were set in stone. You don't understand ROI if you forget that not-so-minor second part. And considering you're choosing between Microsoft and an in-place system, the savings have to be even more substantial since the cost to "transition" to IBM is $0.
Hopefully you weren't the PHB behind the deal or we're going to be seeing another story pretty soon.
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No.
They gave them a 250k discount on the fees the University was going to pay to move the data from one system to the next, and deal with conversions and such.
Microsoft basically said 'Look, if you switch, we'll help you with the conversion for FREE!'. I'm not sure about MS's policies, at this company, we 'waive the setup fee' all the time, which is just a different name for the same thing. The setup fee for us is to deal with the issues of getting them converted from their old system to ours.
We never exp
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Microsoft seems to have something against Nebraska. [youtu.be]
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Business ran just fine without the latest features.
MS Office is over priced bloated piece of software that does everything it can to tie you to it.
It's an easily exploitable security risk, and it force a company to behave how their software works, not the software to behave how there company works.
And of course this office 365 is a constant expense. Her we use office,. nit its office 2003. So while we paid for a license one time, we have used it for 8 years. 8 years at the current charge rate for Office 365
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OpenOffice is good, but it's not a full replacement for modern versions of Office. If all you're doing is authoring memos and papers (by yourself) it will suffice, though. What's with the random dig at Nebraska, though? The state has plenty of social conservatives and plenty of liberals (see: Omaha) -- there's no reason to slam a pretty respectable university over your stereotype.
Yeah, because people were not writing documents or using computers before Microsoft Office was created.
Jesus, new generations are retarded...
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And old geezers completely out of touch with reality are retarded too.
Yes, people can create text files with other various editors, but thats not the same thing.
You COULD use WordPerfect for DOS if you wanted too. I'm sure others you communicate with would be happen to deal with all the wonderful formatting you added in WP that Word knows nothing about.
Oh, they shouldn't be using Word? To fucking bad, they are, and you're obnoxious ass just lost the deal because you think your gods gift to the IT world an
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OpenOffice is good, but it's not a full replacement for modern versions of Office. If all you're doing is authoring memos and papers (by yourself) it will suffice, though.
What's with the random dig at Nebraska, though? The state has plenty of social conservatives and plenty of liberals (see: Omaha) -- there's no reason to slam a pretty respectable university over your stereotype.
Then again, outside of law offices, most of what MS Office is used for is memos and papers, particularly on a college campus. I don't really see allowing multiple edits on a term paper as a useful thing. Most universities actually frown on such an activity.
As for slamming Nebraska, any of the remaining Big 12 conference members would probably question using "Nebraska" and "respectable university" in the same sentence, but leaving the Big 12 was all about money and evidently so is choosing Microsoft's new
It's a mess :( (Score:2)
Part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt on this, but the mean spirit
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And how many court filings have been missed because Microsoft Word ate the pleading?
And how many times has Microsoft been sued for it?
Software that makes sure to not lose your work like lyx is very rare.
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And how many court filings have been missed because Microsoft Word ate the pleading?
And how many times has Microsoft been sued for it?
That's not how debating works, you don't just get to ask questions. So, what are the answers? How many times has Microsoft been sued for Word bugs?
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Microsoft can not be sued over Word eating your documents. You need to closely read that EULA you agreed to when you installed Word. They are not liable if it destroys your data. The only thing you can from them is the cost of the software you bought. So if you bought it on sale or under some discounted bulk license agreement then that amount is the most you will be able to get from Microsoft. Yep it pretty crappy how the software industry disclaims everything and all liability. They even go so far as to sa
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And how many times has Microsoft been sued for it?
Dunno... I couldn't find any filings on that subject; I assume Microsoft's never been sued over it, yet, so that's probably a pretty good record.
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What bug? Can you link to the bug report? I'm curious how I managed to avoid that.
" they can't tolerate these bugs because they get sued class action style."
HAHAHAHAHahhahahah.. oh man, you crack me up. I have seen years of data go buy buy forever because of MS bugs in their office suite.
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On thing about commercial software, they can't tolerate these bugs because they get sued class action style.
Have you seriously never read any EULA? Just about the first thing they say is that you can't sue them for damages caused by their product, that they don't warranty anything.
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Heck, even the biggest Linux advocate would be silly to turn down that much cash.
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The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
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The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
Why when Microsoft does this with a university it is a discount, but when they do it in a foreign country it is called a bribe?
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The 250k is not a payment, it's a discount. They'll still have to pay, just less.
Actually, the 250K is a payment. The actual article states that it is to be used to pay for consulting services,etc. Sounds like if Microsoft is making funds available, that it isn't a discount, but a payment.
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Yeah, but since they'll pay 2x per year, it's still essentially a "upfront discount." It's not like the University is getting money for using Office 365.
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Actually, the 250K is a payment. The actual article states that it is to be used to pay for consulting services,etc. Sounds like if Microsoft is making funds available, that it isn't a discount, but a payment.
If you're going to put it that way, then I'll point out that Microsoft is only paying them to help convert them from Lotus to Office, they aren't paying them to actually use Office. They're paying to get them off of Lotus, which I'm pretty sure qualifies as a charitable contribution.
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You would be wrong, as Microsoft is clearly paying them to switch to their software. If you cut a check for someone to switch to you as a vendor you are clearly paying them to use your products. It doesn't matter how it was spend you gave them cash that they didn't have before. Normally that is called a kick back and is illegal as all get out. Vendors are suppose to compete on the price and quality of their products especially when it involved government groups like a public university.
Personally I think th
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Yes, the primary reason is they have to communicate with people other than OO.org zealots and actually want it to all work.
Sure OO can open a word doc ... sorta, and it can output a word doc ... sorta ... but for people who actually care about getting things done, the cost of Office is trivial in comparison to the headaches that go with using OO.org when you actually don't live in a bubble.
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Yes, the primary reason is they have to communicate with people other than OO.org zealots and actually want it to all work.
Sure OO can open a word doc ... sorta, and it can output a word doc ... sorta ...
I love how people who haven't used recent versions of the software they are complaining about are clearly infinitely qualified to assess the quality of the current version.
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What, you mean libre-office, the open office fork that doesnt have the good old oracle ball and chain attached to both its feet?
That doesnt have anything to do with quality, that is just basic common sense, get out of there before Larry decides he wants a license fee, and you have to suddenly switch within a few days, or bend over.
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Is there a reason they couldn't transition to openoffice instead?
I'm sure there is. Maybe you should contact them and ask, and let us know what they say.
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I haven't seen that behavior, the only incompatibility I see is when someone sends me a file that is newer than my version. This is easily resolved by downloading the viewer from Microsoft if I can't get the document any other way.
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I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff. The truth is, it still lacks many features that Office offers.
So does Lotus Notes, which is the suite referenced here. I think this was really mostly about trying to get the university to transition from Domino to SharePoint.
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I use OpenOffice almost daily, but for very simple stuff.
No, you don't. You post Microsoft marketing crap in every thread where you can stuff your comment.
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Yep, it does ... of course when you compare/contrast those problems to the ones OO.org has, its a fucking retarded contrast, but technically you are correct ... regardless of how incorrect you are from a practical perspective.
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That's what your mom said about your dad, but with no money for dentures, who else was she gonna get in the sack?
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I worked at the University when they made the move to Notes and was involved in the conversion / activation. It was absolutely horrifying, but honestly it was better than what was in place before
So did I. (29 WSEC machine room graveyard shift network monitoring. I learned first hand that there was one person being paid to be on call that you should never call.)
I remember commenting on how bad Lotus Notes was and being told that regardless of its deficits the deal was made, people had been paid, and the whole University was being switched to it. Since leaving I've never had the occasion to use it again.
Could that be why I lost access to my CSE Alumni account?
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You should have probably run the article by your reading comprehension department too.
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No, I'm pretty sure it would be a better place if people tried to actually understand what they are commenting on instead of just spouting off.
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I can't reach.
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GDocs may be inferior, but it's cheaper, and has a large company with a big marketing budget behind it. That's what MS is afraid of, because their business model has always been all about offering cheaper inferior products, marketing them heavily and getting the users locked in.
Also, people were getting their work done with office a decade ago, and the things they need to do haven't really changed.
Problems with export to excel are likely due to microsoft's proprietary formats, do the same problems occur if
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Ahh, if only a kickback was what you appear to think it is. A kickback would be if the person making the decision was personally paid $250k.
This is actually a discount or incentive, and part of doing business.
While I agree with your kickback definition, more or less, a discount or incentive implies a price reduction. Microsoft paid the university cash so the university could pay outside consultants and contractors to work on the conversion. Might not be a kickback, but it sure seems to smell.