J-Walk & Associates, Inc.

Microsoft Office Is Obsolete?

Somebody named Joe Wilcox declares: Microsoft Office is obsolete, or soon will be.

This month's Office 2010 retail pricing announcement and ongoing discounts for Office 2007 Home and Student are Microsoft's tacit acknowledgment that the productivity suite isn't as valuable as it once was. Office is tracking a course of unplanned obsolescence and the inevitable end shared by oh-so many other products: Commoditization.

Or, maybe lower prices can be explained by competition.

I'll ask upfront: Do you really need Microsoft Office on a daily basis? Is Office vital to your work day? Do you use it at home? If you use it at work, how often? If you use it at home or for college, how often? Please respond in comments.

My answers are easy. I don't use Office at all.

Well then, I guess we can conclude that nobody uses it.

And then, he asks another stupid question:

Word processing reached commodity status years ago, as more applications incorporated the basic formatting features most people use more than 90 percent of the time. No external wordprocessing program is required to blog, e-mail, instant message, tweet or post to social networks like Facebook. Be honest, how much of the writing you regularly do requires a dedicated wordprocessor?

That's right, Joe. Everybody's writing is limited to 140-character tweets.

And the he moves on to Excel:

What is Excel or any spreadsheet really necessary for? Sure, lots of business people use spreadsheets for data analysis, but what is the need for consumers or even small business owners? Many financial products or services, like Quicken or Quickbooks, put a friendly face on spreadsheets;

And people actually take this guy seriously?