Story: Microsoft must drop its Office politics

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Jon tells us that the current industry standard is what sells the most, and is Microsoft's current document format.

Microsoft's current format is not even being considered here. We're talking about Microsoft's future format which is not readable by current versions of Office.

There is a huge cost to movign to Microsoft XML. You can't just assume that people will do it anyway so the additional cost is zero. A lot of people still use Office 2000 or earlier despite the existance of Office2003.

To move to Microsoft's new XML standard everyone will have to buy Office 12. They may have to buy new Windows too (or even just buy Windows if they're not already using it). Just sticking with your existing Microsoft Office won't work.

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