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HP, Dell back Microsoft in patent fight
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The following comments relate to this news article:
article published on 28 August, 2009
Earlier this month, software giant Microsoft was shocked when they lost a patent dispute to i4i and were told that the word processing application Word would be blocked from sales starting in October.
Microsoft has appealed the decision and today has gotten some backup support from the large computer manufacturers (and big Microsoft customers) HP and Dell.
The companies asked the judge ... [ read the full article ]
Please read the original article before posting your comments.
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AfterDawn Addict
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28. August 2009 @ 04:01 |
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...So rather than switching to a faster, easier, more reliable, free suite such as OpenOffice, Dell & HP are going to bat for microsoft so that they can work together to screw customers out of money.
""The District Court's injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft," said the Dell and HP brief. "Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell." "
-Any time you force someone to stop selling something, it will affect the retailers as well. This is just common sense, when Heroin was made illigal, many snake oil salesmen went out of business.
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emugamer
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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28. August 2009 @ 08:04 |
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Quote:
The full statement also mapped out how Dell............would be forced to "restructure its products."
Well, it looks like they have a plan and are ready to go. Get to it Dell and HP!
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ElTwo
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28. August 2009 @ 10:09 |
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Quote:
"Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell."
They [Dell] also left out the parts about the enormous profit margin they have on this ubiquitous (a.k.a. monopolistic) product. Give me OpenOffice, or the old WordPerfect.
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Member
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28. August 2009 @ 11:15 |
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Well you have to remember, every OEM image on a Dell or HP includes a whole 60 day free trial of Office!!! With the option to purchase a full license...
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Member
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28. August 2009 @ 14:51 |
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Why does this matter? No matter what happens no matter what the result of the case Microsoft will win. Microsoft always win they have enough money to wee on anyone regardless of the situation. If it's discovered that the entire code for Vista is in fact Mario Kart 64 all M$ would do is buy Nintendo then pay everyone off down to the person that decided what colour Mario's hat should be.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 28. August 2009 @ 14:52
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Senior Member
4 product reviews
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28. August 2009 @ 16:06 |
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Originally posted by keith1993:
Why does this matter? No matter what happens no matter what the result of the case Microsoft will win. Microsoft always win they have enough money to wee on anyone regardless of the situation. If it's discovered that the entire code for Vista is in fact Mario Kart 64 all M$ would do is buy Nintendo then pay everyone off down to the person that decided what colour Mario's hat should be.
we all know vista is based off of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002. Vista like a 747 is slow, old, cant take a hard turn, must use 4 oversize quad engines to operate efficiently and is full of screaming windows users.
XP is like and F-4 phantom its not the fastest but dammit i can do a barrel roll.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 28. August 2009 @ 16:14
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AfterDawn Addict
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28. August 2009 @ 18:04 |
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Originally posted by keith1993:
Why does this matter? No matter what happens no matter what the result of the case Microsoft will win. Microsoft always win they have enough money to wee on anyone regardless of the situation. If it's discovered that the entire code for Vista is in fact Mario Kart 64 all M$ would do is buy Nintendo then pay everyone off down to the person that decided what colour Mario's hat should be.
keith1993,
Traditionally, that's what M$ always did! This time the law is 100% on i4i's side. If they do sell, it will be at 141's price, not what M$ wants to give them! I doubt very much that they will sell! All HP and Dell have done is made that even more of a certainty. They are doing nothing more than trying to get the Court to OK M$ stealing i4i's property! The Courts will never go for it! It will be either pay up for M$, HP, Dell and others, or stop using i4i's property! It's not within the power of the Courts to invalidate 141's patents and take away all rights, and then turn around and award those rights to M$. That's essentially what M$, HP and Dell are asking for, and it's not going to happen! It's i4i's Patent, and M$ and many others are using it without permission or compensation! Even Bill Gates friendship with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, isn't going to change that!
This is also not a case where M$ can drag things out till i4i runs out of money, as i4i bears no financial burden at all. All it's cost them is the fee to file the complaint, and the Attorney's fees for the paperwork. The Court has already investigated and determined that M$ is not entitled to use it, so anyone doing so is in violation of the law! The burden of proof and the expense is on M$, and they don't have a leg to stand on! Bringing HP and Dell into it was a mistake on M$'s part. All it does is demonstrate just how widespread and flagrant this patent rights violation is! Wouldn't you love to be in i4i's shoes? LOL!!
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cart0181
Member
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28. August 2009 @ 23:14 |
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theonejrs may have something there... My first reaction to the news that MS is requesting help from some of their big PC assembling buddies was similar. Who cares if HP and Dell don't like it? It doesn't change right from wrong. All it does is prove MS is trying to flex its muscles. It is all in very poor taste if you ask me. I agree it was a mistake. Or, maybe they are trying for some government sympathy by crying, "We're too big to fail!"
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Senior Member
4 product reviews
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28. August 2009 @ 23:22 |
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its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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28. August 2009 @ 23:32 |
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Originally posted by DXR88:
its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
Acualy, many businesses have switched to openoffice recently, due to the newer Office07 files not working with Office03, and the extremely high price of Office07. It is very hard to justify spending hundreds per computer on new software & training just so you can read files someone sent with an email...it's a recession. Openoffice looks and acts almost identicaly to Office03, so the learning curve is much less severe.
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jcraig03
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28. August 2009 @ 23:57 |
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Let me see if I understand.
If you download a few dollars worth of songs you get $1.9 million fine.
If you steal something worth millions...........
......AND JUSTICE FOR ALL?
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Newbie
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29. August 2009 @ 00:08 |
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Quote:
Originally posted by DXR88:
its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
Acualy, many businesses have switched to openoffice recently, due to the newer Office07 files not working with Office03, and the extremely high price of Office07. It is very hard to justify spending hundreds per computer on new software & training just so you can read files someone sent with an email...it's a recession. Openoffice looks and acts almost identicaly to Office03, so the learning curve is much less severe.
However, the US Government uses office 2007, I don't want to know how much we paid to have all of our systems upgraded. I know we will not be switching to open office.
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Senior Member
4 product reviews
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29. August 2009 @ 00:09 |
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Originally posted by jcraig03:
Let me see if I understand.
If you download a few dollars worth of songs you get $1.9 million fine.
If you steal something worth millions...........
......AND JUSTICE FOR ALL?
Welcome to America, land of the free....if you can afford it.
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AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 00:53 |
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Quote:
Originally posted by DXR88:
its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
Acualy, many businesses have switched to openoffice recently, due to the newer Office07 files not working with Office03, and the extremely high price of Office07. It is very hard to justify spending hundreds per computer on new software & training just so you can read files someone sent with an email...it's a recession. Openoffice looks and acts almost identicaly to Office03, so the learning curve is much less severe.
KillerBug,
I can't for the life of me understand businesses changing to Open Office! There's just too much incompatibility between it and Office XP. I had to re-install Office XP because Open Office would not open a lot of my files!
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Junior Member
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29. August 2009 @ 01:51 |
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If i4i is publicly traded all M$ would have to do is buy up the stock and do what Oracle does...take over.
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AfterDawn Addict
1 product review
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29. August 2009 @ 02:09 |
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Originally posted by theonejrs:
Quote:
Originally posted by DXR88:
its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
Acualy, many businesses have switched to openoffice recently, due to the newer Office07 files not working with Office03, and the extremely high price of Office07. It is very hard to justify spending hundreds per computer on new software & training just so you can read files someone sent with an email...it's a recession. Openoffice looks and acts almost identicaly to Office03, so the learning curve is much less severe.
KillerBug,
I can't for the life of me understand businesses changing to Open Office! There's just too much incompatibility between it and Office XP. I had to re-install Office XP because Open Office would not open a lot of my files!
This is the first I've heard about such incompatabilities. From my experience, office 2003 files open better in openoffice than they do in Office 2007. Plus, most companies that are in this boat are not uninstalling office 2003, they are just adding openoffice to open the newer file formats...and the users slowly switch off of Office 2003 as they get to know the faster, more efficient, and more accurate results generated by OpenOffice.
"However, the US Government uses office 2007, I don't want to know how much we paid to have all of our systems upgraded. I know we will not be switching to open office."
It makes me feel sick to be a US citizen when the government does stuff like this. There are superior alternatives available for free...and there are more than enough people in the government that know this...but they still buy Office 2007 so a few non-elected officials will get kick-backs and bribes from microsoft. If some more bribes had been passed around back in the early part of the last century, Heroin would still be legal.
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AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 02:34 |
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Originally posted by 20TONS:
If i4i is publicly traded all M$ would have to do is buy up the stock and do what Oracle does...take over.
20TONS,
That's the real beauty of it all! David has Conquered Goliath! The Patent is owned by a small Private Canadian Company that's not even listed on the Stock Exchange, and they'll still get to negotiate with M$ after M$ coughs up 330 Million Dollars, awarded by the Court! 290 Million USD, plus another 40 Million USD in Punitive damages when the Court discovered that M$ willfully infringed on the patent! I don't give M$ much chance in trying to get the verdict changed! Not with that much guilt already admitted!
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-inv...article1251606/
This has been in the Court system for more than two years, and now finally M$ has been caught doing what they have always done and gotten away with in the past. This time it wasn't a company it could so easily crush! I guess that Bill Gates will have to face the reality that his money can't buy everything, perhaps for the first time!
Let's hear it for the "Little Guy"! My hats off to him!
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AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 02:41 |
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Originally posted by KillerBug:
Originally posted by theonejrs:
Quote:
Originally posted by DXR88:
its a big deal to alot of businesses, every place i've been to they have word suite. sure free is good for the home segment,majority of the business segments wants nothing to do with it.
there is even a certification for word. wouldn't look good going to clerical/record keeping school for a year only to find out your certification for word means nothing anymore.
Acualy, many businesses have switched to openoffice recently, due to the newer Office07 files not working with Office03, and the extremely high price of Office07. It is very hard to justify spending hundreds per computer on new software & training just so you can read files someone sent with an email...it's a recession. Openoffice looks and acts almost identicaly to Office03, so the learning curve is much less severe.
KillerBug,
I can't for the life of me understand businesses changing to Open Office! There's just too much incompatibility between it and Office XP. I had to re-install Office XP because Open Office would not open a lot of my files!
This is the first I've heard about such incompatabilities. From my experience, office 2003 files open better in openoffice than they do in Office 2007. Plus, most companies that are in this boat are not uninstalling office 2003, they are just adding openoffice to open the newer file formats...and the users slowly switch off of Office 2003 as they get to know the faster, more efficient, and more accurate results generated by OpenOffice.
"However, the US Government uses office 2007, I don't want to know how much we paid to have all of our systems upgraded. I know we will not be switching to open office."
It makes me feel sick to be a US citizen when the government does stuff like this. There are superior alternatives available for free...and there are more than enough people in the government that know this...but they still buy Office 2007 so a few non-elected officials will get kick-backs and bribes from microsoft. If some more bribes had been passed around back in the early part of the last century, Heroin would still be legal.
KillerBug,
The problem I ran into was in data received in Rich Text Format, which seems to be a favorite in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I couldn't open any of them with Open Office. I re-installed Office XP and it reads the text, NP!
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AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 02:55 |
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MS office 07 is a buggy hell some places have stopped supporting it and went back to office 03. 0-o
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jinnek45
Newbie
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29. August 2009 @ 04:32 |
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theonejrs
I was intrigued by you saying you could not open RTF docs. in Openoffice. I have just tried, and they opened at once. I save small docs. in MS Notepad in RTF. One I opened was an HTML page saved in RTF. I use Openoffice 3.0, but I know previous editions have done the same. As it happens, I'm in Scotland.
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AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 05:35 |
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Originally posted by jinnek45:
theonejrs
I was intrigued by you saying you could not open RTF docs. in Openoffice. I have just tried, and they opened at once. I save small docs. in MS Notepad in RTF. One I opened was an HTML page saved in RTF. I use Openoffice 3.0, but I know previous editions have done the same. As it happens, I'm in Scotland.
jinnek45,
These were all Genealogy information in RTF format and not a one would open. I got a message telling me that it didn't know how to handle this file, or something to that effect. I put in OpenOffice from the program files, but it wouldn't open the file. By everything I understand, it should have opened with the Word Processor part of Open office. I did a little hunting around and my Office XP is version 10! After installing it, it opened every file!
I know nothing about Open Office personally, as this is on my friends computer. He asked me because he couldn't figure it out. I failed to get it to work, so I installed my Office on his computer, and then they all opened fine! I also have Enterprise as well, which I assume is 2007. I'm personally much more comfortable with the older version. I've been using Office in one form or another since version 4.2, around 92-93!
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Member
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29. August 2009 @ 10:56 |
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all M$ had to do was keep with the .doc format... but noooo they had to change it... good job buddy! next, linux foundation will be suing you for infringement on something. lol!
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Mez
AfterDawn Addict
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29. August 2009 @ 17:25 |
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M$ COULD have done something before and could settle it now. However, like sooooo many of these piggy corporations that is no fun for them. They want to get away with murder because they have been contributing so much mony to re-election campains for decades. That is the only way they get their rocks off, is to get away with murder. HP and Dell are want to be piggie corps so they will do what they can. Or maybe they just don't want to get off their f*cking asses. I would not buy from them, unless the deal was too good to pass up.
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pmshah
Member
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30. August 2009 @ 01:34 |
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I wonder why HP/Compaq Dell should get involved at all in this litigation.
When Novell sells copies of Suse the PC builders want and get redemption fro any kind of liability arising out of it. Did HP/Compaq Dell buy Win + Office combos without any? How sad !
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Junior Member
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30. August 2009 @ 02:29 |
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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-inv...article1251606/
Let's hear it for the "Little Guy"! My hats off to him!
theonejrs
Thanks for the good read. I'll be watching this one closely. I hope M$ lose their appeal and have to pay up and remove it as ordered. Screw Dell & HP as they knew what they were getting into dealing with M$.
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