MS makes yet another smart move 1719

Ray Ingles They are unlikely to abandon the old data, but even so, many companies have a lot of embedded cost in using VBA to generate employee administration forms that roll up to operations reports, etc. To effectively replace MS Office, OO would have to pickup this side of the investment as well. Also, MS Office doesn't cost all that much relative to the training aspects for current employees. A department manager fears the task of introducing a new technology into an established operation much more than you apparently think they might. Just an hour or two of lost time and-or retraining is an expensive proposition and that is less than the feared cost of mistakes that can be made in a new environment.

It may be a lot of FUD, but that is why leader products stay in place in all industries. The MSJet DLLs are part of Windows distributions and give applications a very quick way of keeping small pools of data handy without any setup or maintenance. Remember when dBase was such a popular product? Access is free for runtime applications. People using apps will use what they know. They do not like to be put into a new situation since they will feel uncomfortable until they become familiar with it. That is just nature. People who learn apps in school learn the commercial apps because that is what business asks for on employee applications. If you are not mainstream, you have difficulty being recognized.

Good enough isn't sufficient to overcome resistance to change. Good enough needs some help. With the evolution of desktop PCs, the help was a steep cost differential between, say, a PC WP program and a dedicated WP such as a Lanier system. Or between a collection of PCs with P2P

Once you are an entreched market leader, the good enough choice is easy to beat. Interestingly enough, the DOJ and states had subpoenaed all of these contracts that were in effect with OEMs. They were introduced as evidence under seal. However, no such charges were ever filed by the DOJ and states who had access to these secret contracts and a number of similar charges were made, for example not allowing the OEM to alter the initial appearance of the IE logo. If any such practices were there, there would have been some indication.

Windows has no place in embedded systems unless there is a substantial UI requirement where a supplier would expect to benefit from the end user's familiarity with Windows.