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back to article Office 2010 retail sales shaken, not stirred

Early sales of Microsoft’s Office 2010 proved somewhat “disappointing” in the first two weeks that the software hit retail shelves, according to research outfit NPD Group. NPD’s weekly tracking service found that units and dollars were down from Office 2007’s first two weeks of sales. Despite that, the company said Microsoft’s …

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  1. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Office 2003 Rules!

    Many of our corporate high-end laptops came with Office 2007 pre-loaded. Our support people were requested by most of this user group to remove 007 and put good old comfortable 003 back on their units.

    There are simply too many features in Office for them to be properly employed by most users and buying the latest and great version irrespective of how 'feature rich' they may be is wasted money if they will not be used.

    3 2
  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Headmaster

    Office 2010?

    I'm still using Office 2000, does me fine.

    2 0
  3. Nigel 11
    Flame

    Ofice "upgrades" not wanted?

    The truth is surely that most people don't want to "upgrade" Office, especially while Microsoft keep making gratuitous changes to the user interface. They want to "upgrade" Office even less than they want to "upgrade" Windows. Eventually, of course, their hardware dies, or Microsoft pulls support and their organisation has to "upgrade" for security reasons.

    Spread the word about Openoffice - if you're going to have to change your user interface, at least make sure that doing so saves you money rather than costing you money.

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    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Jobs Horns

      Re: Office "upgrades"

      It depends what you mean by upgrade. If MS had spent the last 7 years going through Office 2003 and fixing every last bug, they'd have a real money-spinner on their hands. But no. They had to pour their efforts into changing the bits that already worked. You could say the same for XP, of course.

      The brutal truth is that MS has achieved nothing over most of the last decade and even now looks to have no new ideas. Look how far Linux has come in the same period. Look at Apple. Then look again at Microsoft, and try to figure out why they haven't gone anywhere.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    And they'll continue to be dissapointing...

    ...until they get rid of that god-awful 'ribbon' system, or at the very least allow people ot configure it themselves like the old menus on Office 2003 (the last decent version of Office).

    How anyone can think that completely redesigning an interface and then preventing people from customising it will improve productivity or customer uptake, beggers belief....

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    we've got

    a few copies installed, and it has royally cocked up the calendar of anyone who's logged onto one of the machines and used it, as we are primarily office 2003 still.

    so probably not going to be rolled out for a while.

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  6. hplasm
    Linux

    Oh Dear.

    How sad.

    Never mind.

    0 1
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Huh?

    There seem to be a couple of obvious things missing from this press release.

    Primarily, that no sensible person buys Office via a retail channel these days.

    People who just want generic WP, spreadsheets, etc for home or small business are quite likely to be happy with OpenOffice, for free, pre-loaded by small PC shops around the world or installed by the friendly neighbourhood geek. The article/release doesn't even mention OpenOffice. The usual flannel about incompatibilities and retraining etc from MS Office to OpenOffice is these days just as likely to apply between different versions of MS's own products as it is with competitive products.

    People who want home PCs compatible with corporate IT presumably use the corporate Office licence clause that locked companies in<<<<<<<<< used to allow this for free (does it still apply?).

    A third category, those buying home PCs from Dell and HP and maybe others, get a trial version of MS Office pre-installed; if they subsequently take the bait and fork out the $$$, does that count as a retail sale, or not?

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  8. A 20

    Boxed software not flying off shelves, says NPD analyst?

    Boxed software overpriced, says potential customer.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what a surprise?

    Beats me why anyone buys Office at the full retail price.

    To reiterate what others have already said, OpenOffice does me fine thank you. I could have bought the full Office suite for less than £10 through a home use deal my employer has with Microsoft but why bother. Besides, I swore I'd never buy another MS product after struggling for too long with Vista.

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  10. Change can be good
    Thumb Up

    Competition from OpenOffice, Google Docs and Zoho

    The Competition from OpenOffice, Google Docs and Zoho is just amazing.

    Hard to beat such value, awesome products being given for free.

    1 0
  11. Ascylto
    Alien

    Picture

    What the software lacks is a picture of Mr Ballmer on the front and a free video of him inside (the box, silly!).

    0 0
  12. Maryland, USA
    Thumb Up

    Even better than Open Office is the German-made...

    SoftMaker Office 2010. Test after test finds it more compatible with MS Office. I find it the easiest to use. Ever since I switched to it, my blood pressure has gone down. At about $80 U.S. for 3 licenses, it's not free, but it's a terrific value.

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  13. Maryland, USA
    Thumb Down

    still no support for nonmodal headers and footers

    After, what, 15 years? MS Word still won't show headers and footers in full color. Nor will it let you edit the header or footer without switching into header/footer mode. WordPerfect does. FrameMaker does. OpenOffice does. Softmaker Office's TextMaker does. Why, oh why, doesn't MS Word?

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  14. Michael Schmidt
    Happy

    Huh?

    Did I read correctly that the reason people buy M$ Office is that they are ignorant of alternatives? And here I thought it was because it is such a superior product!

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Office 2003 prices.

    Baker.

    “Office 2007 was a radical new design that certainly helped deliver a lot of curious buyers and it was launched nearly parallel with Vista, adding a good deal of promotional activity in the software aisle, both of which likely helped drive initial sales of Office 2007.”

    No Baker, it was repackaged crap, done with the most stupidest of ideas - like "the ribbon".

    30% of the desktop hidden, and the ribbon couldn't be changed to the tool bar/s, nor sized down.....

    Idiot.

    I was given a copy of O7, and after fitting it with some after market software to change the ribbon back to a toolbar,........ Ugghhhhh a week of that and in the bin.

    If I do any upgrading it will be from Office 200 to 2003. That's the final version of that.

    An interesting observation - Office 2003 professional still is retailing at the same price as Office 2007.....

    Funny about that.

    I'll go shopping from friend for that one.

    $2 and a CD burner.

    As long as I get my chance to kick Microsoft to the gutter, one cent at a time.

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