Nerd Talk that Might Affect You

I got an e-mail with a .docx file attached. Never saw that before and Windows didn't know what to do with it. Upon further research, I learned that Microsoft has developed a new "open" standard for its 2007 Word documents based on XML. Good news, right?

Not sure what they mean by "open" or "standard". Not only does it not open in OpenOffice (my office suite for the last couple of years), but it doesn't even open with last year's Microsoft Office. So, because this was an important attachment, I went to the Microsoft web to find a solution.

Turns out you can download a Microsoft Word Viewer (a la Adobe) which appears to be free. Downside? It's a 25 MB download with TWO user agreements. I took the plunge, tried to open the file again and got this message: "This file was created by a newer version of Microsoft Word. Would you like to download a compatibility pack so that you can work with this file?" No. I would like for this file to already be open.

But it wasn't, so I downloaded the "open, standard" compatibility pack (so that the Word document will work in the Word viewer). Whoops! Another 28 MB download called "fileformatconverters.exe".

Oh! I have been chosen to participate in a beta for the new "Silverlight Download Center"! Looks like all this downloading caught someone's attention! Not now, I'm trying to open a file!

Another EULA and I double-clicked the file again so I could finally see it. Hey - it worked!

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A plea:

Microsoft, please quit innovating. When you rip off other technology, there's a 50% chance it'll become the norm - stick to that formula. When you innovate, it pisses off 100% of your users. Adobe has been using proprietary formats for years and they make no bones about the PDF being closed and proprietary. They also make it pretty easy to download the viewer. Also, they DON'T CHANGE THEIR OWN STANDARD FROM YEAR TO YEAR! You're acting like the record industry, and that will lead to a similar revolution.

p.s. - leave Yahoo! alone.

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Finally, if you're using your home computer for word processing, spreadsheets, or presentations, I highly recommend OpenOffice. It's free, it does everything MS Office does, PLUS it opens and saves PDFs. Can't do that in Word. If you'd like tips on tons of other free software (browsers, image editors, firewalls, e-mail, operating systems, etc.), go to www.OSALT.com and type in the program you'd like to replace. The free, open sourced stuff is becoming as good as the old stuff.