> As I understand, Microsoft's monopoly depends on "lock-in" strategies.
One form of the lock-in is file formats. MS doesn't publish the technical specifications for the file formats of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. That makes it hard for competing software to read and write these documents, hence forming a significant obstacle for customers wanting to migrate to competitors, at least for those who have large quantities of important data in those formats.
>From what I have heard, the file format issue is even a problem
*within* MS products, that is to say, going from one version of Word
to another. Apparently the latter doesn't always properly handle the
formatting of documents created with earlier versions.
There are efforts to pressure MS to support ODF, a set of open document formats (obligatory Wikipedia citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument ) but the success of that remains to be seen.
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam