A New Format For Microsoft Word Documents
May 1st, 2008 by hbond{{chris}} What if instead of paying alot of money for Microsoft Word – you simply paid a small fee to create a Word Document?
Microsoft is and has been in a battle to preserve their revenues from Microsoft Office while combating free services like Google Docs. Having been testing Google Docs and EverNote recently the following thought occurred to me.
The core features of MS Word that I need on a very infrequent basis is the Table of Contents, cross referencing and styles for when I am producing a very long proposal. Otherwise I don’t need the power house that is MS Word. A simple richt text document with font formatting and bulleting will suffice for the overwhelming majority of the documents that I write.
Unfortunately I have to pay the hefty price for the entire office suite. Well, what if Microsoft made a version of the .docx (or .doc) file that was both the Editor (to write the document) and the viewer (to view the document) and then allowed me to purchase the right to produce individual .docx documents? I may even purchase them in bulk and save some money. I am no longer paying for the program to create an unlimited number of documents but for the right to create a limited number of documents in the volume that I need. A user-name and password of sorts configured during the purchase process would allow me to edit the document – while default access would only allow viewing.
In this new model I would then be free to purchase only the number of .docx files that I need to do my job and not any more. I would also have the freedom to edit my documents on any computer as the lightweight editor is bundled into the file itself.
What do you think? Is this idea worth further consideration?
Open Office is free and does everything that the MS suite does. Your idea is a lot like the way PDF’s used to be. Everyone got to open them for free, but people had to pay to make them. That was profitable because companies and other institutions were willing to pay for that document protection. Now, you can make them for free on Word 2008 (at least on the Mac version, not sure about PC). I guess most people would rather just pay a little bit of money for the program and be able to do whatever they’d like for an infinite number of documents.
hmmm… I like a blog post that makes me think.
Hey Jacinda,
You’re right it is a bit like PDF was in the beginning. The key difference though is that I’m suggesting that the editor be built right into the file document, negating the need to buy the software to create an infinite number of documents.
While I like Open Office it still does not work as smoothly as MS Word does.
It’s just a thought – but one I felt putting out there!
I like the idea of the monopoly Microsoft has over the office system to be broken up. I use Google Docs for a lot of things because it is just easier to view it online instead of constantly transferring updated documents from computer to computer.
I have to agree with you there! I can’t believe there are not any viable commercial competitors to MS Office. Perhaps with the new open standards coming into play we’ll see something pop up.
For now – Google Docs and a service called Evernote is where I am putting my basic note taking documents, and I’ll reserve Word for my proposals.
I’ve actually found the .docx has been a deterrent to me. No one I know can read them easily, so I just use Open Office and create old-school .doc files instead. Between .docx and Vista, I’ve never in my life had so much ill will towards Microsoft.
I can’t even remember last time I used MS Word. Probably to open an existing document someone sent me. I usually use something very simple and quick, such as wordpad.
But the main prob is the older version can’t read the new formats. I am really suffering for that.