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I agree with you that if more of us developed for Linux, eventually it would make a dent...problem is big corporate clients insist on being communicated with via Excel & Word docs...and a lot of them do all their scheduling and communicating with Outlook and presenting with PowerPoint...you'll be left out in the cold if you don't *obey*. Having said that, I'm staying on Office 2010 for the foreseeable future. If someone built .NET scripting into Open Office / Libre Office, that would seriously tempt me 
The Linux platform would help its cause immensely if it would settle on the *one* desktop combining all the best features of all of them. I only use Linux in console mode myself, usually to run LAMP stacks. Arch Linux is my current favorite, I've used CentOS and OpenSuSE as well (gave up on SuSE when they abandoned Mono).
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It's not whether more of us develop for Linux. It's if more people adopt and use Linux which people aren't going to do. It's a bit of a learning curve for many and I somehow think the day of Linux being number one is long gone. Companies won't move to Linux because they won't make money and if Microsoft gives away the OS for free, why would anyone try Linux in a mainstream level?
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Well, Android is a Linux ...add some printing, etc. and you're almost there.
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You'll get no quarrel from me. I've been exclusively Linux at home for 4 years; POS is not really the case, Microsoft generally imitates features Linux introduces, except for Brainfart 8. No, wait, Ubuntu Unity is supposed to be a unified device interface too, so that's another concept they imitated.
I keep a 7 machine in the kitchen for compatibility with work, but I generally only wheel it out once a month to allow all the updates to sh!t through the eye of a needle at once. It only takes half an hour. I can iron 3 shirts while I'm waiting, or record a rant for Vimeo. Tell the truth I only use it for torrents; I like to f"ck with potential beadles' heads.
My lovely Linux computers allow me to do every normal job for free. Libre Office is fine for all 'Office' type work I do, although it isn't absolutely in fidelity with MS Office; presumably the new 'features' are an arms race to keep the open source alternatives guessing. You can't really blame them for trying.
And of course, the Linux familiarity enabled me to increase my salary by 40% as my current employers use hybrids and virtualisation.
The future is bright.
The future is Orange.
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Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote: presumably the new 'features' are an arms race to keep the open source alternatives guessing.
Let's just hope they never implement ribbons. They haven't, have they?
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote: And of course, the Linux familiarity enabled me to increase my salary by 40% as my current employers use hybrids and virtualisation.
Very nice!
Marc
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No ribbons. The features I was thinking of are file-types and Excel macros. Apparently the macros in Libre Office are slightly different.
LibreOffice is much, much better than Open Office; Open got taken over by one of the biggies(Adobe? Oracle?) who promptly alienated all their softies.
Those guys bailed and started Libre Office, so basically all the owners got was a pile of unmaintained code.
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Simple. Use another operating system or stick with what you have. There's nothing forcing you to upgrade.
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Actually, there is > Try and find a laptop with Windows 7, try and buy a copy of Office 2007 I believe you can still but 5 years from now I doubt it. not to mention the security patches that will inevitably not be delivered to a discontinued version of windows
My rant is not just from a End user perspective but that from a Developer perspective , there is nothing more i would like that to boot up ubuntu install netbeans and get in the zone with java but the most of my end users still uses Internet explorer (not because its the better browser, its because it came with their corporate PC along with Excel and word and all that other stuff that comes for free with open office but for some reason Microsoft still manage to sell to everyone
Chona1171
Web Developer (C#), Silverlight
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If you pay $10, you'll get 1TB of OneDrive which is the only reason why I signed on. 1TB per person and 5 licenses for $10/mo..... everyone's happy if 5 members of the family pay $2. Online backup storage and Office. Still beats paying $200+ for an Office suite when I can have this and get free upgrades.
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Oxford and Cambridge say aye!
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There are two parts to this: subscription pricing and IE updates.
For subscription pricing on desktop software, I can only agree: it's generally annoying. However, if you subscribe for the Office365 access and it's concomitant app benefits that are continuously updated, then there's a value proposition. Also, businesses can choose subscriptions preferentially as it appears differently on their balance sheet.
So for a general user, particularly one that is change-averse, it's annoying. Businesses less so.
Regarding IE, you're way off beam.
Changing the name won't fork the number of IE versions to test: it's just window dressing.
And regarding the testing: IE is now more compatible than ever before with other browsers, reducing the overall load, and most items are addressable via feature detection rather than incredibly buggy user-agent checks and CSS hacks.
I am part of a dev team for a large, enterprise package that supports IE8-11, FF and Chrome. We don't have any IE8-11 user agent checks. We don't have any CSS hacks. We feature detect a couple of things across these versions: placeholder support, CSS animation support, pointer events -- and progressively enhance.
There does not need to be a Jenga tower.
EDIT to add: I prefer Chrome/FF over IE, but I have no desire for the IE team to go back to their previous ethos where their release cadence was incredibly slow, and they were both buggy and incompatible. The current pace of change is benefiting the whole web.
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I doubt JavaScript will be supported in the new browser at all
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Well, call me crazy, but I actually think there's a lot of benefits to the subscription of office. Not only do I get 1TB of onedrive storage (which IMO justifies the price on its own), but I also get to install the latest version of office on 5 PCs/Macs and 5 tablets. Bonus: 60 minutes of free calls with Skype (to real phones), not that I use it, but nice to have anyways. No install media - just click install on the office site.
The Windows 8 thing is changing. Win9 will be desktop centric. Luckily for us  Let's see how it looks in the end of september.
What detection issues in IE? Browser or feature detection? Since IE10 (and somewhat even 9), I can finally write apps in Firefox or Chrome and they will look and behave exactly the same in IE11. MS finally got it right, and it's actually a lot faster when animating stuff with lot's of CSS3/SVG.
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Erling Limm wrote: Not only do I get 1TB of onedrive storage (which IMO justifies the price on its own), but I also get to install the latest version of office on 5 PCs/Macs and 5 tablets. Bonus: 60 minutes of free calls with Skype (to real phones),
I second you, maybe I am crazy too  . I should add that subscription mode doesn't even scratch my wallet every month and the benefits are worth it.
To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems - Homer Simpson
----
Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia
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Back in the day new coke was introduced, most people liked it, so they changed it
Those who didn't kicked up a fuss because they made a very big miscalculation , those who liked new coke also liked old coke
Though not completely the same but here's the thing to introduce this model of business microsoft is throwing in all these nice goodies, Skype calls one drive ect, 10 years from now everyone is on a subscription model and have no copies of the old Office left , and they can do with that price as they please , as end user you might not feel it but enterprise licenses will be ridiculous, maybe its just paranoia but it does have the feeling of paying for something you already paid for..
As for the browser capabilities detection , quickly write a asp.net app in .net 2 3 or 4 (not 4.5) create a basic login, and run it on IE 10 or try storing a session variable, when you have 50+ sites online its not a lot of fun being on the other end of that conversation.
For flat sites, basic content sites there may be some improvements.
Chona1171
Web Developer (C#), Silverlight
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It'll be interesting to see if installable-versions of products like Office completely go away. There are probably tens of thousands of devices installed on US government networks that are not, and will never be connected to the Internet because they're classified systems. Most of them run Windows (XP and up) and most have Office installed. I imagine there are a lot of companies with "disconnected" networks that are similar. That would be a lot of $$$ Microsoft would be turning their back on if non-Internet-based solutions are no longer an option.
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OpenOffice or Libre. Government should have made the switch years ago. Many state and local governments already have. State of Kansas where I live for example.
Unka_George
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Your points are well taken.
Developers are stuck with the "change for the sake of change" model, but users are not. For example, replace M$ Office with FOSS OpenOffice or Libre Office, replace Exploder with FireFox, etc. Even the operating system can be replaced with FOSS such as Ubuntu.
It is not at all clear to me why IT and Accounting are not leading the charge to replace M$ with FOSS if only to escape the never ending cosmetic upgrades and the resulting training costs and loss in productivity because of the user "learning curve," which in many cases exceeds the licensing/rental costs. The collateral costs of peripherals that will not work with the new O/S version are also significant.
Unka_George
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Member 10591816 wrote: Developers are stuck with the "change for the sake of change" model, but users are not. For example, replace M$ Office with FOSS OpenOffice or Libre Office, replace Exploder with FireFox, etc. Even the operating system can be replaced with FOSS such as Ubuntu.
It all depends on where you are as a developer. If you're in a "shop" that requires chasing the "bleeding edge" that may, indeed, be the case. If you're operating on your own, though, you might not have to be. The tools I'm using are considered "old" as far as the development community is concerned but my clients want stuff that will run on desktop on their LAN or as a web application. So far I haven't run into anything I need to build for them that requires anything more recent than what was available with VS2008 which I find to be very stable. I haven't had a client notice yet that their executable was built by a six-year-old version of VS!
This whole "change for the sake of change" model, as you call it, is largely marketing. All right, sometimes you have to upgrade things if you're trying to address the latest and greatest platforms but even in the case of Microsoft it's obvious that they're seeing that the desktop ain't going anywhere. Everything I'm writing with VS2008 still runs fine in the latest Win desktop. Really breaks my heart that I don't have to keep buying later versions of something I still ain't overusing yet!
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Chona1171 wrote: Office going to a subscription model , even though nothing really new has been added and Office 2007 still serves it purpose perfectly Bought it for $200 where I now have to spend that same amount every 15 months.
Heh ... you say you use O2007. I still use O2003! I never did care for the ribbon. O2003 works perfectly under Win 8.1 I might add!
I feel your pain although I wouldn't say I'm "worried" about MS. I simply am not following them nearly as closely as I was. I develop desktop / backend stuff and a little ASP.Net stuff for the web (which version 3.5 does very nicely thank you). Anything I develop for my clients is with VS2008/SQL Server 2008 R2/Active Reports 6 which all work fine . Not everybody is on the "upgrade train".
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You're just now getting worried about Microsoft? I haven't trusted them for probably two decades, after getting burned one too many times by their lack of quality and techo-narcissism (and at one time I actually liked M$). Aside from a couple OS packs and whatever came with a laptop I bought, I haven't paid for any of their products for over a decade. If it is something they have a free version of, I might use it, if there are no viable alternatives.. but in general most of my applications are from other sources (like open source). And if windows based games ran reliably on other platforms, I probably wouldn't even use their OS at all.
MS only cares about two things.. maintaining control and profit. They don't really care about technology, innovation, developers, or any user. They only seem to care about those things when it aligns with their agenda (i.e. control and profit). They will push larges amounts of money in PR trying to convince people how great their products are because many of them are so bad that they would never survive on their own merits. And the moment anything doesn't fit with their agenda, they will drop it and not give a damn about the countless users that they duped or forced into being dependent on the technology/product. Can anyone say Silverlight, XP, or VB6?
Hopefully this is just the death spiral that will put Microsoft in its place. After all, IBM was once an all-powerful company, until they fell hard and was forced to be far more humble.
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This is precisely why I am no longer investing in or currently developing software with Microsoft technologies. I still use PowerPoint 2003 a lot because I like the ease of use of the spline feature in graphics. Still, I'm a part-time/amateur developer with my own business/hobby so I can afford to be choosey! I appreciate that it may meet the needs of many, but it doesn't seem to meet mine. I seem to be going down the C++, PHP, JS route. I do find this a little sad, because I once placed my hopes in .NET, but it has disappointed me.
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I still have a lot of old vinyl to rip, mostly 80s, but a lot of earlier stuff as well.
Mostly I have been trying to preserve stuff that is likely irreplacable or at least not worth paying for a second time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TEIw2hYNgo[^]
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