Microsoft Loses Again, But It's Almost Irrelevant

Microsoft just lost it's appeal against the patent infringement verdict handed to Toronto-based i4i. It's all about the Custom XML function integrated in Microsoft Word, in both the standalone Word 2007 and the bundled version in Office 2007. Copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007 with the feature removed will be available for U.S. sale by Jan. 11, and "beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, don’t contain the technology covered by the injunction," said Microsoft's Kevin Kutz, after the judgement. i4i developed a custom XML editor and patented parts of its software product. The courts have ruled that Microsoft knowingly infringed on the i4i patent when it included a similar custom XML editor in Word 2007. The whole idea here is that a great, big, multinational corporation such as Microsoft can't willfully eradicate a market being developed by small companies. Competition is one of the things that helped make Microsoft what it is today: highly successful. Now that it's a vast multinational, proceeding ethically (and legally) through the competitive business world is much harder work. Microsoft must be more careful. I'm still using Office 2007 though, and if you're using it too, there's no need to switch. In fact, the alternatives are basically inadequate anyway. So what's the effect of the ruling against Microsoft? Aside from the fact that it now owes i4i about $290 million, not much else. Big enterprise users of Office 2007 and (late next year) Office 2010, can use i4i's excellent custom XML editor (just like they were doing before), or one of any of the dozen or more custom XML editors on the market. Existing boxed versions of Word 2007 and Office 2007 are unaffected by the patent ruling. OEM versions of Office 2007 have already been patched. In the meantime, at this time of year Office 2007 and Word 2007 are selling at comparatively bargain basement prices at Amazon. Get Word 2007 here. Get Office 2007 here.

Microsoft to Release Office 2010 in June

The problem with all the alternatives to Microsoft Office is mainly that they aren't reliable enough for serious business use. OpenOffice is good and apparently getting better. Our aging review was quite enthusiastic, and we even pointed out that OpenOffice was most likely all that most home users would ever want or need. Business use is another matter. Complex text, spreadsheet and presentation documents containing unique formatting created with Microsoft Office often break the import filters in OpenOffice. In a business environment - especially considering the time constraints which severely restrict the number of cycles most small business owners have available to fiddle around fixing messed up documents - Microsoft Office is the absolute standard. Google's online office software applications are interesting, limited in features and scope, and work only as well as the speed and stability of your Internet connection allows. The same is true for ThinkFree. Both lack the complex filters needed to import (or create) complex formatting (no indexes, tables of contents, footnotes, etc.). The Microsoft Live products online fare somewhat better, and they perform clean imports of complex documents. Use the others if they suit your needs. For me, Microsoft Office is still the king of the hill now and for the foreseeable future. Get Microsoft Office from Amazon.