Microsoft's net income falls by 28 percent in Q2

[onehandle]

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Microsoft's net income fell 28 percent year over year for its 2007 second fiscal quarter as it spent ahead of its mass market launch of Windows Vista this month.

Revenue was up 6 percent despite the fact that the company deferred $1.64 billion of revenue and operating income from its second quarter to its third because of Windows Vista and Office 2007 coupons issued over the winter holidays.

For the second quarter, ended Dec. 31, 2006, Microsoft reported revenue of $12.54 billion on net income of $2.63 billion, or $0.26 earnings per share (EPS). Both revenue and EPS were ahead of estimates from Thomson Financial analysts, who predicted Microsoft would earn $12.1 billion, or $0.23 per share.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20070125/tc_infoworld/85448_1

No wonder they're faking their Wikipedia entries.

Microsoft in hot water over Wikipedia edits

(AP) -- Microsoft Corp. has landed in the Wikipedia doghouse after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.

While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.

"We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wales said Tuesday.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/01/24/microsoft.wikipedia.ap/index.html

[OhioChick]

1. Cry Me a River... n/t

[Kutjara]

2. They're pinning their hopes on...

...hastalaVista and Office 2007. Even though M$ are investing heavily in other areas (XBox, Zune, content services), their bread and butter is still the OS and office productivity suite. They're hoping that Vista's steep system requirements will spark a boom in sales of new PCs and that they can ride the wave.

Interestingly, for such an important product, the Vista launch is pretty low-key. It's being released on Jan 30, but I haven't seen any ads for it outside of the technical press. I wonder if they're going to go for a massive push on launch day?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

3. I fix PCs.

And I suppose I will have to get a copy of Vista to get a sense of what is going on. But with them already announcing the development of "Fiji", AKA: Windows Vista Service Pack 1, scheduled very tentatively for Q2 2007, I have been telling everyone I know to stay the hell away from the thing.

And then, there is this:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

[Kutjara]

5. Very good advice.

Any M$ product should be avoided until at least the first service pack. Indeed, XP wasn't really all there until SP2. None of the corporate clients I deal with are even considering Vista until next year and some will be deferring until the year after. They all have way too many custom applications running to consider the horrendous cost and complexity of porting them to Vista.

Like you, I'll be getting a copy of Vista on launch day (that I'll install on my Mac), just so I can keep ahead of the curve, but I don't see it becoming a major part of the enterprise PC landscape for a good while yet.

[SayWhatYo]

8. I never pirate my OS until it's been proven...

I don't want to not waste money on something that will cause me headaches. ;)

[Kutjara]

10. But of course.

There's no point in stealing crap; it's just a wasted effort. :)

M$ have implemented all kinds of antipiracy feature in Vista, though, so you know what that means. Yup, pirates will be able to install it with no problem while consumers will end up in court 'cause they typed in one number wrong out of a 50 digit code.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

15. I agree,

I don't see it getting rolled out in any enterprises for 2 years, at least.

I also see Desktop Linux Distributions getting a new and far more serious look in the enterprise. There is a reason Dell has just announce that their PCs are available with no installed OS, and a copy of ReactOS bundled with them.

[Kutjara]

20. This could be the big chance for desktop Linux.

I'm running Ubuntu on a couple of machines, and it is certainly a hell of a lot more usable than the other distros I've run over the years. I'd almost consider turning it loose on office users (something I'd have had a heart attack even considering a couple of years ago).

I long for the day when OSless PCs are the norm, not a geeky rarity.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

23. Another prediction:

I will not be surprised if we see something of a return of the desktop support guys building boxen for the enterprise.

As we all know, ROI is the god and keeping costs down the alpha and the omega. In fact, I see Vista as the tipping point for a lot of things, a lot of the comfortable assumptions and models that have been entrenched in corporate IT for the last few years.

[Kutjara]

26. M$ have been banging the drum of...

...the "lower total cost of ownership" of their products for years now, to the point where some deluded souls actually believe it. I regularly encounter M$ "Enterprise Strategy Consultants" who are permanently installed on customer premises, endlessly whispering in client's ears how bright their future will be if they only buy "Enterprise Information Server 3000" or "Cobbled Together CRM Software 6" or "Hmmm Let's Throw a Product at This Market Professional". It's like having your crack dealer actually living with you.

I share your hope that some of the addicts wake up and kick the habit.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

30. What impresses me the most...

Is that after you shell out for the manifold licenses for the software and the users and the seats and the instances and the services...gasp...you then have to shell out for 3rd party enterprise management applications so people can administer it in a coherent fashion.

Quite the little racket they got there.

[Kutjara]

33. Shh, don't tell anyone.

That's how I make my living.

"So, Mr. Customer, you've bought yourself a load of M$. Congratulations! Now, would you like it to actually work?"

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

35. Yeah...

The SAP guys have the same racket going. I had a friend who was making $200K/yr to make SAP work, because out of the box, it just didn't.

[Kutjara]

38. SAP is great like that.

I have several friends whose families are fed and housed very nicely because the software is useless without about $2 million of "consulting." IBM, BEA, Tiscali and a slew of other companies are making billions getting software to play nice together. It really is the most appalling racket.

[Occulus]

39. Read the link.

That's some scary scary stuff. I will NOT be getting a copy of Vista if even half of the information in that link is true- and I already know that's the case.

The only way I'll ever get this OS is if they drop the DRM crap once it pisses off too many people- and again, if even half of the information in that link has any truth to it at all, that will almost certainly be the case. Now that they're demonstrated how and where the shiny red doomsday button is, someone, somewhere, will push it, just like Stimpy did.

And yes, that's actually an accurate analogy to a potential unintended consequence of Vista's hardware revocation list. Imagine if all the HDMI chips in your HD devices suddenly didn't work with Vista... permanently, because a hacker released the keys into the wild. It's not the hacker disabling your TV/Hd monitor/plasma display as it functions with Vista... it's Micro$oft.

I predict Micro$oft disables all content protection in Vista within a year of final release. It's all jut too restrictive to survive. They are trying to force all Windows users to premium, HDCP-capable hidef hardware, but in the end all they'll end up doing is just pissing people off.

Really, read what's at the link. I had no idea Vista was this horribly constrictive. I won't be getting it, and I strongly urge others to do the same if even half of that link is true. This sounds like just plain bad bad news.

ed.: I've been reading the link further. Check this out:

... In other words small variances in performance are a normal part of system functioning. Furthermore, the degree of variance can differ widely across systems, with some handling large changes in system parameters and others only small ones. One very obvious way to observe this is what happens when a bunch of PCs get hit by a momentary power outage. Effects will vary from powering down, to various types of crash, to nothing at all, all triggered by exactly the same external event.

With the introduction of tilt bits, all of this designed-in resilience is gone. Every little (normally unnoticeable) glitch is suddenly surfaced because it could be a sign of a hack attack, with the required reaction being that (from the spec) “Windows Vista will initiate a full reset of the graphics subsystem, so everything will restart”. The effect that these tilt bits will have on system reliability should require no further explanation.

:wow:

[Kutjara]

53. That's a very important consideration.

I'm glad you mentioned the DRM and security aspects of Vista. They will be a support nightmare for M$ and can potentially cost it an enormous amount of customer goodwill.

I agree that M$ will pull all that crap out of Vista pretty quickly, but I'll bet the hacker community will disseminate a patch that disables it even faster. They've already worked around much of the inatallation authentication stuff. Ripping out the "tilt bit" detection stuff will be even easier.

I'll be using Vista, but only because I have to in order to keep up with what my customers are using, but all my real work will continue to be done either in OS X or Linux.

[rcdean]

45. I'd very much appreciate knowing what you use to run it on a Mac?

Is this on one of the new Intel Macs?
What's been your experience running PC software on Macs? Can I, for example, use ActiveX technology? Can I run Access? Can I at least open an Access db?

I would really appreciate hearing from somebody like you who has actually done it.

Many thanks in advance.

[Kutjara]

54. Yes, you need an Intel Mac to do it.

If you have an Intel Mac, you can download a free program from Apple called Bootcamp (www.apple.com/bootcamp), which enables your Mac to run Windows XP natively (it also creates a driver disk so Windows can recognize the computer's hardware). You also need to have a copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Bootcamp won't work with an earlier version of XP).

The process is pretty straightforward. Run the Bootcamp application in OS X, decide how much of your hard disk you want to let Windows have, create the Windows driver CD, then follow the instructions for installing Windows. Once Windows is installed, insert the driver CD and let it set up your keyboard, iSight camera, Airport card, etc, and you're good to go.

Running Windows is easy. Simply hold down the Option key when your Mac boots up and you'll be allowed to choose which OS you want to run, OS X or Windows. If you choose Windows, you'll boot into a native Windows environment and your Mac will work exactly as if it is a PC. This means you can use ActiveX, Office for Windows, Access or any other Windows programs exactly as if you are on a PC, because you actually are. They run just as fast as on a PC, because there's no emulation going on (as there is with virtualization software such as Parallels or SoftPC). Essentially, you now have a Mac and a PC in the same box. The only drawback is that you can run either Mac OS or Windows, but not both at the same time (as you can with Parallels). If you're using Windows and you want to use Mac OS, you need to reboot, hold down the Option key again, and choose Mac OS. You'll be back with your Mac working as God intended.

One important tip: when you format the Windows partition in Bootcamp, choose Fat32 as the filesystem rather than the more modern NTFS. The reason for this is because OS X can read Fat32 partitions but not NTFS ones. By formatting in Fat32, you'll be able to move files between Windows and Mac OS by simply dragging and dropping. It makes working with the two systems much easier.

Bootcamp will also work with Windows Vista, apparently (according to the user forums on the Apple website; I haven't done it yet), but there's a bit more fiddling around to do to con Bootcamp into believing your actually installing XP, and to extract the device drivers from Bootcamp in a way Vista can use. The Apple support forums give details, so I'll do it when my copy of Vista arrives next week.

The next version of OS X (10.5 or Leopard) will have Bootcamp built in and it will handle Vista out of the box, so you can wait for that if you'd rather not hack around with the current version of Bootcamp.

[ixion]

28. great analysis

thanks for posting it.

[RoyGBiv]

41. I'm struggling with this ...

Building and repairing systems has always been a side-business with me, not something on which I rely for income. (I basically use what I make from this to feed my hardware obsessions.) The release of Vista is going to force me to make a decision. I have absolutely no plans to install Vista on a system I use day-to-day, and I have so far convinced myself I will not give Microsoft another dime of my money after the fiasco I experienced trying to activate a legally purchased XP license. But, if I want to keep doing this at all, I'll eventually have to learn about Vista, which will mean using it.

Well ... I have a copy of the final release for public consumption that will work for a year. Guess I'll chew on that awhile as I contemplate.

[wakeme2008]

4. Problem is Vista requires a min of One Gig but more like Two Gig

of memory to work and most PCs do not have that installed today. So to buy Vista you have to Upgrade the memory in your PC or buy a new PC. This is not a cheap matter...

[Kutjara]

6. And memory is just the start.

You'll also need a pretty hot graphics card to run all the "Aero" eyecandy, a nice big harddrive to hold the OS (M$ recommends 32 Gig for Vista alone, which doesn't leave much change out of a 60 Gig disk for video, music and photos), and a fast CPU to run the forest of processes that underlay all the fancy-dancy features.

So a 2 GHz Core2 Duo CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 100+ GB drive and a 128-256MB graphics card are probably the minimum spec necessary to get the most out of Vista. Quite a price to pay for an OS that's little more than a visual and security update to XP.

Oh, and if you want to take advantage of Vista's fast boot functionality, you need a machine with a hybrid drive. Ka-ching!

[fujiyama]

25. I just built a new PC

in September with similar specs (C2D, 2GB RAM, 320GB SATA HD, etc etc).

It's crazy to think this is just "mid end" in terms of Vista requirements. I d/led it a while back, tried it, and liked it at the time, but there was little driver support so I went to XP.

I really don't know why many people without a newer PC will want to switch though. It had some cool functionality with regards to Media Center (automatically detected HDTV card), but if you're not using it for those kind of apps, then it's a waste of money. I don't even know what the gaming support is like for it at the moment. Maybe with the growth of DX10 video cards, people will want it more, but even still you're talking a limited segment of hardcore gamers.

[Kutjara]

29. Tell me about it.

If you don't have twin 512 MB graphics cards running in SLI mode, you're not even in the game. New motherboards that support C2D and it's successors will handle 4 GB of RAM (which will quickly become a requirement for getting bloated productivity and multimedia apps to run). Terabyte NAS drives are selling for about $1k in Fry's now, and will fall in price as people buy them in increasing numbers to store all their huge video files.

The age of efficient programming is long gone and cheap memory and fast chips mean that the trend will continue for years to come. Here comes the 100 Gig wordprocessor! Hurrah!

[SayWhatYo]

7. Perhaps cheap is relative....

but memory is fairly cheap. It should also be noted that the memory requirements vary depending on the version. Most people will be fine with only have 512Mb of ram...

[onehandle]

12. How many OS's have run "fine" with the minimum ram requirements?

Fine=barely, buggy, slugish, and prone to crashing. With no memory left over to run applications.

[SayWhatYo]

27. That really depends...

Depends on how much extra crap they are running. I personally try to keep my systems running with minimal services and background applications. However, I understand that most users do not tune their systems to much extent, and the minimum requirements would probably not be acceptable(although I can't say for sure).. Although, the point is that it probably will not require(as in realistic requirements) 2 gigs of ram. I'm betting maybe somewhere between 512 and 1 gig... Again, I can't say for sure yet since it's obviously not out and I only played with an old beta a long time ago(although it did run some what decent on a system with only 396Mb of ram.. of course that is without it being used under real conditions)

[RoyGBiv]

40. Define "extra" ...

I remember when XP came out, installed on systems with 128MB of memory, which was the minimum requirement, all the tweak guides quickly concentrated on turning off aspects of XP that actually made it different from 2000/NT in order to make it run somewhat efficiently. This wasn't a case of people trying to run a dozen apps at the same time, rather trying to run the OS as installed with *one* app that would freeze for ages while data was written to and read from a pagefile.

Windows 98 would run on a DX2/66 system with 16MB of RAM ... if you wanted to wait, literally, 10 seconds for every drop-down box to draw.

Microsoft has always under-reported its minimum system requirements because they define "minimum" as what it takes to let the OS load. (With XP, they even made the absurd announcement that XP could run under 32MB with "reduced functionality," like, oh, being able to run anything else at all.) The definition has nothing to do with that OS actually working in a real-world environment with anything approaching efficiency.

The base OS for Vista will certainly load with 512MB of memory, and it'll even work with all the features that the average consumer would actually notice turned off, which leads one to ask what the point is? If I have to turn off everything to get the thing to run, why should I use it?

The truth is that Microsoft built this version of Windows almost entirely around the concept of protecting content offered by other companies. Their security white papers spell it out rather plain when they declare, repeatedly, that Vista is an environment in which "premium content" can be safe. By contrast, whether the user of the OS can feel safe is barely mentioned in any security spec and not at all in most. To get that functionality that protects media companies working, no, you don't need more than 512MB of memory, but that functionality doesn't benefit a single consumer.

[smtpgirl]

13. and use other applications with 512MB of RAM and you

have a very slow computer.

Used to work at a job that used at least 4 custom apps on any one PC. Finally talked the IT Manager at the time (my old boss) that people were complaining about how slow their computers were, sometimes it took 5 minutes for certain applications to load.

And if you remoted into a server using term serv, that was local in our building, good luck.

[Yavin4]

9. There's A Big New Billboard for it in Times Square

And there are radio ads. However, I feel that they know it's a turkey, another Windows ME. Every savvy IT dept knows not to buy a new Windows operating system right out of the box. You let some other fool pull their hair out downloading and installing patches.

[Kutjara]

14. Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!

You reminded me of WindowsME. That was, without a doubt, the biggest heap of crap ever foisted on the computer-using public. I make a living out of knowing a thing or two about operating systems, and I couldn't for the life of me get that shower of shit to run reliably, except by accident.

I agree that Vista will have an uphill struggle, particularly since M$ have seen fit to fragment it into about a jillion versions. Way to confuse the crap out of everyone. "Ohh gee, Martha, what do you think we should get? Personal? Premium? Premium Home? Professional? Personal Professional Premium? Personal With Just a Light Dusting of Professional? Ostensibly Professional But Really for Games? Ultimate? Premier Ultimate Personal? Partridge in a Pear Tree?"

Never was :wtf: more appropriate.

[onehandle]

17. Vista is the Windows ME for 2007?

Maybe.

[Yavin4]

46. BINGO!

Stay away from the Vista. Learn from other peoples' foolishness.

[Warpy]

11. I think the word is out among most geeks

that their systems are going to have to be upgraded to handle Vista, especially the graphics card and monitor.

Money's tight for a lot of us out here. I think knowing that the new OS has outpaced your computer's ability to perform is a great disincentive to upgrade to it.

Gamers with money to burn will probably upgrade immediately. The rest of us can take comfort from the fact that Microshaft announced today that it will offer customer support for XP beyond the original date of 2009 all the way to 2014.

By then, we'll all have replaced the hardware with something that will handle the OS.

[smtpgirl]

16. doesn't that tell you something? I will stay away from Vista as

long as possible. But I will probably have to learn how to use it soon, since I am in IT.

I think IE7 sucks too, it's like using a playschool browser.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

19. I am gonna wait until I get...

My first cert on the way to MCSA. I just know there will be a nice copy of Vista in it for me. ;-)

[Warpy]

47. I disagree somewhat about IE7

because I do appreciate the larger field and the smaller task bar. I can load timewasters without changing the resolution, a definite plus for a blind old bat with lots of time to waste.

However, the format is kindergartenish. That might have been the point, to make it accessible to dimwits.

Condolences on having to learn Vista sooner than the rest of us. I don't anticipate using it until my machine, my backup machine, and my ancient NEC with Win 95 all conk out beyond repair.

[Kutjara]

18. Not to be a total Mac bore, but...

...one of the things I like about Macs is that you don't have to throw your machine in the bin everytime Apple upgrades the OS. I run OS X Tiger on everything from G4s to Mac Pros and they handle it just fine. Sure, I turn a few doodads off on the older machines to make them run a bit faster, but they're still very usable.

I'll be interested to see how Vista runs on a couple of my <1yr old PCs. I'll bet I have some upgrading to do.

[onehandle]

21. 3...2...1...

:beer:

[Kutjara]

22. Oh yes, I know I've just opened the wormcan.

I've got my flame-retardant suit all laundered and pressed, ready to wear.

Let the PC vs. Mac war commence!

[SahaleArm]

31. The new Macbooks need lots of memory

The shared video on the macbook pretty much demand 2GB of physical memory. Basic browsers like Firefox and Safari require a fair amount of memory and it'll only get worse. All things considered It's still the best laptop I've owned.

[Kutjara]

34. I went for the MacBook Pro for just that reason.

Shared memory is such a drag on system resources. I love the MacBook, but I just hate the integrated memory shortcut.

[SahaleArm]

36. Portability vs. Graphics speed

I really needed/wanted the portability of the Macbook over any sort of graphics performance. I write software so my main applications are terminal, vi, ssh, apache, subversion and gcc. My servers are all FreeBSD so working on a BSDized OS (OS X) with native shell and ssh is nice. For my needs the dual core 2 GHz processor was sufficient.

[Kutjara]

37. Absolutely. If I didn't need the faster graphics...

...I would definitely have gone for the MacBook. It's so much nicer to lug around.

Unfortunately, I'm a slave to computer games, so what can you do? ;)

[Warpy]

48. There are advantages and disadvantages to both

and I prefer the larger available software library and the non proprietary nature of the innards of the PC.

To each his/her own.

[Kutjara]

50. Absolutely.

I run Windows on a few machines, but only really use it for games and those applications for which there isn't a good Mac equivalent. The nonproprietary nature of PC hardware is also a big plus, helping to keep costs down and (arguably) innovation up. Now that the Mac is Intel-based, I hope some of the benefits of the PC architecture are reflected in the Mac platform.

I haven't really found software to be a constraint on the Mac. There are Mac applications for pretty much everything I want to do and, while there aren't as many for the PC, 99% of those are either pretty poor or just "me too" products. Since I generally only need one or two apps for any particular job, it doesn't matter if there are more of them for the PC, as long as I can get hold of the right ones.

For me, the real test is when I go traveling. Being a major geek, I have computers of all kinds littering my house. When I go out on the road and reach for a laptop to take with me, though, it's always my MacBook Pro I reach for (albeit with Windows XP in a small partition for those "just in case" situations). There's just something about the Mac that makes it a pleasure to use. The fact that it boots up in about a quarter of the time of a PC (without having to fiddle around with services and processes) is a big plus too.

[fujiyama]

24. Is Xbox still losing them money?

I know the original xbox was. I don't know what the deal is with the 360. Any idea about the Zune?

I really wonder how big the need to upgrade to Vista will be for many especially given the incredibly high system requirements.

[Kutjara]

32. Most of their non-OS and Office businesses are losing money.

They're using the revenues from these two products to fund their future dream of becoming an entertainment powerhouse. The XBox 360 is locked in competitive war with the Playstation 3 and Wii, as they all fight for market share. M$ isn't losing anything like Sony (who are taking a $500-1000 bath on every PS3 they sell), but they're still subsidizing the box heavily. The Zune is currently nowhere and needs a shedload more investment before it's even a serious contender for the iPod et al.

Vista better do well or the Redmond Behemoth will find it's wings clipped.

[Casablanca]

42. Their OS operations always lost money until Windows 2000.

And Windows 2000 only barely made it into the black.

Windows has never been a big money maker for MS. It's only been enabling technology for Office, the only real cash cow MS has, and all of their other byzantine technologies that are only designed to run only on Windows. It won't happen this year or next, but MS will eventually have to phase out its OS development and go 100% with app development.

[SahaleArm]

44. Thats' silly - Windows (and DOS) has always been a cash cow for MSFT.

Windows and Office represent about 70% of Microsoft revenues and 80+% of it's revenue for the life of the company. Windows client generates about 25% of MSFT's profit.

[Nomad559]

43. The Zune is currently nowhere

Not a bad start for a player that has been out for only a few weeks.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2272
Zune grabs No. 2 spot at retail during first week

An initial surge in demand has given fans of Microsoft's Zune something to cheer about, as the player captured the No. 2 spot for all digital media player sales at retail during its first week on the market.

According to NPD Group’s weekly point-of-sale data for the week ending November 18, the iPod rival secured a nine percent unit share, representing 13 percent of the dollars spent in the U.S. portable digital player market.

Zune was bested only by Apple Computer's iPod, which retained its dominant share during the week by grabbing 63 percent unit share and 72.5 percent dollar share.

[NickB79]

49. Not the 360, it has become profitable

And sales of them have shot up, especially after the incredibly limited supplies of the Playstation 3 over the holiday season and the release of some excellent next-gen. games (Gears of War).

[citizen snips]

52. Gears of War sold 2.7 million copies

and that is just the opening week so right now they are making a revenue.

[ProudDad]

51. Unfortunately, they don't have to

all of the computer manufacturers have already drunken the kool-aid and are switching now.

I just got under the wire with a purchase of an HP with XP (which is still NO prize but...) that I hope is my LAST PC. Next time Apple (probably).

The only reason I didn't go Apple this time is because my main audio processing software (a $600 package for professionals) won't run on Apple.

[high density]

55. Vista is a lot different than the Win 95 or Win XP launches

I too can't believe how low-key it is. I don't know why corporate America would be knocking down the doors to get it anytime soon. Direct3D 10 seems to be the main draw if/when games take advantage of it. At the retail level it should help the stupid users keep their computers a little more secure. I downloaded Beta 2 and it really didn't blow me away. Some things seemed to have changed just for the sake of changing them (e.g. display options dialog.) In the end it was nagging me all to hell so I just gave up in frustration and deleted it after a few hours.

Office 2007 looks nice. I really like the new "ribbon" interface and I think it's intuitive enough so that users familiar with the menu/toolbar layout of Office 97+ should be able to find what they need in the new layout. The price for the "standard" suite still seems too steep ($350+ volume licensing) for a word processor, spreadsheet, email client, and PowerPoint.