[COMP] office 2000 SR-1

Microsoft has released Service Release 1 for Office 2000.  

Don't count on actually being able to get it though- it's a whopping 141
Megs!  What are they thinking?  

Let's talk about this, cuz here's the way I see it:  Microsoft releases
Office2000.  It's a decent suite, but when compared to Office97 with
both service packs, it's pretty buggy.  They make huge amounts of money
off of it (~500 bucks at OfficeMax, for example), but here's the ploy:
They make a service release a just a few months after the product
release, and rather than making it small enough to download, or making
it modular, so you only download what you need, they make it one, big,
monolithic download.  Problems: 

1) No one can download 141 megs of data at once, unless you've got a
decent network connection.
2) Folks at universities can easily download 140 megs (within a couple
hours, probably), which only strengthens the stranglehold on the
university environment that Microsoft.
3) They can now charge you for another CD, because you probably want the
service pack.  Rather than providing it for free (hey, you paid 500
bucks for the software, don't you want the complete, working product all
at once?), they can rip another $20 or $30 from you.  

It's a conspiracy!  I see an X Files episode in here somewhere... :)  

John




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