"CDW does have vested interest in Office 2007 and Vista deployments."

What do you expect from a Microsoft Gold Partner, eh? Microsoft's technique.
They all are on the same page. This is no different from "It's Another Vista TCO Study".

If Vista, Office 2007 and the rest software from Microsoft are not doing well, then Microsoft should be in deep financial situation ..

The cash cow of Microsoft are desktop OS and Office productivity suite , but not server and application product

But we don't hear negative comment from rating agencies

Joe, are you tracking the right information or you are trailing on the wrong source ?

Joe: interesting article, I will wait some additional information before express my opinion, but perhaps the "good enough" threshold is playing here?.

More about OOXML
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2007-09-05.en.html

"Corrupt countries were more likely to support the OOXML document format"
"The countries which are perceived to be more corrupt were more likely to vote for the approval than the countries perceived less corrupt"

Marco, the implication that those countries are supporting Open XML because they're corrupt is a pretty sweeping statement to make, and very condescending to the people involved. Do you have evidence, other than EFFI's speculation?

Here's a thread that sums up these sorts of factless allegations pretty well: http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/200709/msg00024.html

An Open Letter to ISO

http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2007/09/07/an-open-letter-to-iso/

check out the links within that for the various countries

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1188392528934&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Above link is titled; Digital World: A Vista blast from the (very recent) past

Quote from the link;

"As long as users, private or small business, don't buy new hardware that has Vista preinstalled, they aren't going to go out and buy an upgrade copy of Vista (even corporate users are queasy about upgrading). All it takes is a quick search of user forums to see just how dissatisfied many of those who have upgraded are. Many, in fact, wish they could roll back the clock, get rid of Vista and return to good old XP!"

link below is titled; More Irregularities in the OOXML ISO Process Surface

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070827111019189

Chips;Nice links.
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1-MS it's a convict Monopoly that has not ethics o moral doubts to get its objectives.
2-I have said that I lived some time ago in third world city and was witness, among other issues, of corruption problems.
3-In the case of OOXML the interference of Microsoft was clearly proven (Sweden's Vote on OOXML Invalidated)
4- Coincidence?:"11 new P sign-ups, Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Malta, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela, all voted to approve or approve with comments, except for Ecuador, which disapproved, and Trinidad and Tobago which abstained. What about the O members? Almost to a man, they voted to approve. What an amazing coincidence."
5-More coincidence? Just Sweden? What an amazing coincidence too, found one of one or it is that it is more difficult to discover these issues in poor and/or third world countries?
5- I can go on, but think that it is enough and there are reasonable motives to have doubts of the whole process, including the possibility of MS ( remember, lack of ethics) corrupting poor nations (which have high indices of corruption already)

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070907-iso-reforms-proposed-in-response-to-ooxml-shenanigans.html
"ISO reforms proposed in response to OOXML shenanigans"

"Isene outlines some of the problems that have emerged in countries where Microsoft allegedly manipulated standards approval bodies, including Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Portugal, and Malaysia. "Even if this is the tip of an iceberg," writes Isene, "the examples should warrant a thorough examination of the national processes."

To all it my concern, and to Doug Mahugh;

I have been saying for some time now that this sites comment section is infested with Micro$oft shills. That is M$ employees maskerraiding as regular bloggers or commentators. Perhaps that wasn't what Doug wanted to come across as, be he done it anyway and should have know better. He did not introduce himself as an employee of MicroSoft, which he should has done right away. This proves that once and for all the Micro$oft will use paid employee bloggers as norminal commentators in comments sections of forums.

Now while Doug Mahugh is entitled to an opionion, don't you think it would be nice if he introduced himself first? Doug works for the Microsoft corporation, as a "Technical Evangelist" and lives in Seattle, WA'

Doug also is on the forefront of M$ fight for the Open XML format. He has been travelling all over the world in this fight, and it seems astroturfing as well.
chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/
mahugh.com/asia99/asia15.htm

and here is a link titled; A conversation with Doug Mahugh about his OOXML world tour
//channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=330408

blogs.msdn.com/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=27474

also a whois on doug's link, gives us this;
www.who.is/whois-com/ip-address/msdn.com/
read at the bottom of the page for all things micro$oft

NOT CONVINCED YET?
just type Doug Mahugh into google and look at the results.

This is my favorite hit in google;

chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2006/01/20/microsoft-town-hall-meeting/

its titled; Microsoft Town Hall Meeting

Quote from the link; "
I just got back to my desk from a “town hall meeting” across the street, where Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer discussed Microsoft’s plans for this year and answered questions from audience. Questions were also submitted via email, and of course it was being webcast on the Microsoft intranet. It was a standing room only crowd in the cafeteria where the meeting took place, as you can see in the photo.

Steve wasn’t as high-energy as he often is, although he got a excited momentarily on a few topics, especially related to flexibility and pace of change. I enjoyed hearing Bill mention Office 12 and Sharepoint early and often, although it made me feel like I should be back at my desk working!"
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Bottom line, its dishonest to pertend to be someone else than you are, even by omission. That is one of the things that stinks in Redmond.

So I guess Neil was right, he was going to tell and did, his Boss Lord Ballmer at Redmond. Doug is fairly high up in the chain of command at M$. We must be getting to them.

someone with a slashdot, digg, or growlaw account should post this about the M$ shill be uncovered.

hey chips since;
'Doug' *works* for 'Microsoft Corporation', as a "Technical Evangelist"
Maybe 'Doug Mahugh' needs to be added to _this_ list? eh?

"Recipients of the Emperor Has No Clothes Award:"

http://ffrf.org/awards/emperor/

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9745801-7.html

Microsoft's Open XML hits snag in standards process

Quote from the link;

"Doug Mahugh, a technical evangelist at Microsoft specializing in the Office Open XML file formats, gave a detailed accounting of the voting, which showed that Microsoft did not achieve the two-thirds "approval with comments" vote it was seeking."
-------------------------------------------------------
So how many of these MS Shills, or "technical evangelists" does MS employ? Doing a google search for "position Microsoft technical evangelist" it would appear that they have been hiring them all over the world, since about mid 2006. Are all the "technical evangelists" shills? Maybe not, who knows.

job postions at ms
beta.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=10707

IBM Joins OpenOffice.org Community

http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/07/09/10/126241.shtml

Quote from the link; "The upshot is that they're making a long-term commitment to OOo; no organization has paid off any other organization for this; they're devoting about 35 of their developers in China to OOo; and they'll be contributing accessibility code from Lotus Notes to improve current support for assistive technologies"
----------------------------------------------------
This should get some of our local "MS Technical Evangelists" or just plain Shills in a tether.

Why is it that MS seems to hate IBM so much? Have you noticed? I think its because MS and IBM were partners on OS/2, before Bill Gates decided to really screw over IBM. To this date MS suffers from a guilt complex over the name IBM.

The fact that the MS standard failed in the vote, and now IBM is announcing more support for openoffice, is a good thing for competition. Another word that MS fears on a level playing field.

My company has looked at Office 2007 and decided at this point there is no reason to migrate from 2003. There are no features that would provide us a return on our investment. We would need to train thousands of employees just to deal with the new interface to continue to keep cranking out the same old letters on company letterhead. We will most likely wait until MS cuts off support which is what forced us up to from Office 97 to Office 2003. I am not even sure why we upgraded from 97 to 2003 because of support as I asked how many support calls we made to Microsoft on Office 97 and the answer was just one. This is a pointless sidegrade for most people.