Eh it was a joke.

Ah, apologies, then. You'll want to familiarize yourself with a selection of these for use in avoiding future misunderstandings: .

But that would mean . . . !

Maybe Microsoft broke GPL again with something related to Nokia products.

This thread has the gory details... MS Office on Nokia phones

WTF, seriously. Why not get OpenOffice.org working well?

I don't know if my experience illustrates a wider trend or is an outlier, but years ago, before mobile phones knifed PDAs in a dark alley and PalmOS vs. Windows CE/Mobile/whatever was a choice one might consider, I worked for a company that went with the Windows solution. Why? Well, opening Word and Excel documents was a stated priority for the folks who'd be using the devices, and though 3rd party software on the Palm performed the task better, it wasn't "real".

Folks wanted Word, not something that opened Word documents. That the two Words obviously weren't the same program and had only limited compatibility with one another was irrelevant. The name alone decided the matter.

Epilogue: The HP Jornada clamshells purchased were quickly abandoned due to being too large to carry to meetings, too unreliable in synchronizing, and not able to open regular Word and Excel documents. PDAs were declared non-useful.

It's amazing how Office manages to be incompatible with anaything else. Word and Excel files have grown up into bloated monsters full of unheard-of features that always make programs like open office and mobile versions of the programs break when they read less simple files. I can never fill simple forms that are sent to me because they are never opened quite right in openoffice. And it is quite annoying that it can't diagnose exactly where can be a problem when you switch file formats.

I hope the MS Internet Office trend means files will become simpler, and more compatible with OpenOffice and others... That could happen: for the first years that people start using the "iOffice" we manage to have more interoperability between windows users and others. That until Microsoft starts making things complicated again.

On the other hand, I have been seeing a great difficulty in my work in the adoption of the docx format, not to mention windows Vista. How long are windowze users going to be stuck at the pinnacle of incompatibility?

Compared to the alternatives, it's too bad that the publishing (Word/Excel) world is being led by its nose by Microsoft.

OpenOffice hasn't set a standard that's stuck. In fact, why hasn't anything replaced *.rtf, *.txt, *.doc, *.xls, *.pdf and *.ppt? Too much bellyaching, no solutions that will drive people away from MS Office.

If a better option were to truly evolve, it needs to be pushed out there. That just hasn't happened. I wonder why.

What's with all the extreme reactions lately?

nvm-- joke. Got it.

Well, for one - instead of innovating you will be forced to reverse engineer and support MS's proprietary formats. Its an already lost battle.