Re: Cost of MS Office relative to LO, was: Fwd: [libreoffice-users] Re: moving to new version of MS Office

Hi :)
Most products have numerous well-known competitors.

Normally an offer of a free trial-period is marketed to state that
after just a short time of using their product you will see how much
better it is than x, y, z because of a, b, c.  So they even name some
of their competition, drawing attention to the alternatives you could
try instead.

When MS offer a free trial it is not made clear that people could
choose an alternative.  The only option seems to be to either buy
their product or not use any word-processor or office programs.

There is no crap-shoot because none of the other choices are known.
It's not akin to the shareware idea at all!

However, I think people (incl me) have been too heated about this.
It's not the same as a drug-dealer giving a freebie to get someone
hooked.  People are not held hostage.  There is no immediate threat of
swift physical harm.  It is something similar to those ideas but even
native-English speakers can't find the more precise words.  Even if we
could it might not mean much to anyone else.  Everyone online has
probably seen hostage scenarios and/or the drug dealer scenario on
tele or at the movies (or online) so it's the easiest way of getting
the idea across.

Regards from
Tom :)


On 30 November 2013 00:20, Virgil Arrington <cuyfalls@hotmail.com> wrote:
> James wrote in response to John:
>
>
> > > I didn't know we considered trialware "cunning".
>
>
> > They let people create & edit documents for a while and then hold them
> > hostage, until the users coughs up for MS Office.
>
>
>
> I wouldn't consider it either cunning or holding people hostage to provide
> them with a free trial of software that is otherwise only available for a
> price. That, indeed, has been the essence of shareware -- try before you
> buy. Anybody obtaining a trial version of MS-Office is clearly told that it
> is a trial version; no cunning, no deception.
>
> If you don't like it, don't buy it.
>
> The creators of the shareware concept (I recall Bob Wallace of the PC-Write
> days) realized that buying software is often a crap-shoot. You don't know
> until after you've bought the program whether it will do what you need, or
> whether you will appreciate the manner in which it does it. This is
> especially important in the case of an office suite as users will tend to
> use them on a daily basis, eventually becoming married to their program. MS
> allows some users to try their program before making such a commitment.
>
> For my part, on my last computer purchase, I received a free "starter"
> version of MS-Office, with some limitations on features, but without any
> limitation on time. I can use the starter version forever.
>
> I'm no fan of MS, and I'm sure I don't fully understand all of its business
> practices, but I truly hope that disdain for Redmond is not the primary
> motivation for LO and other forms of FOSS. And, yet, it's a theme that
> recurs on nearly every FOSS related forum I read.
>
> IMHO, it's better to focus on what's good about LO than what's evil about
> MS.
>
> Virgil
>
> Software
>
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