Tuesday, January 01, 2008

The evil of docx

So Microsoft has done it again. As the number of Vista user increases, the number of Word documents I receive in the new Vista format increases. And of course, Microsoft has created a new format that cannot be read, even if you have bought Office 2004 on the Mac. Does anyone other than me find this completely unreasonable?

The only answer open to me, and every other non Vista user -- ask the sender of the document to resend in an old format.

Frankly it just makes me angry at Microsoft. It can't possibly be helping the impression of them as a company. There is no reasonable explanation for another document format change other than an attempt to force upgrades to Vista.

Couldn't we all simply refuse to use this new document type? Do we need to start a protest movement?

1 comment:

Geordie said...

Although I agree with your general point, the issue is not quite as dire as you imply. MS has had a beta converter available for Mac Office 2004 for several months.

Microsoft Mac Downloads

It is far from a perfect solution but often a better solution than trying to get the person to resend the document.