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8th October 2006

TESCO SELLS SOFTWARE
WINDOWS VISTA TURNS ITSELF OFF

Brian Grainger


 

TESCO ENTERS THE SOFTWARE MARKET

The press got very excited when Tesco in the UK announced it was about to sell software. Tesco made the announcement at the same time as announcing another set of great profit figures. More and more of Tesco's earnings are coming from non-food products and the press see Tesco as conquering all sectors it enters.

Tesco are planning to sell software for the basic applications that most people use on the PC. Because it includes an Office package, at less than £20, the press see Tesco as challenging the might of Microsoft! A little thought and it should be obvious that Tesco will have no impact on Microsoft sales whatsoever. Tesco sells goods to the average man on the street. Ask yourself the question. How many of these people would buy a copy of Microsoft Office if Tesco were not providing an alternative? I think the answer would be a number close to zero!

What Tesco has done is team up with a software distributor to provide them with packages for retail sale. Apart from the Office package, Tesco plans to sell a security package, photo editing package and CD/DVD burning software if the news is to be believed. Each piece of software is to be priced at no more than £20.

It was reported that the distributor that Tesco plan to use is Formjet plc. I had a look at their web site to see what products they distribute.

The Office package is Ability Office. This is quite well known and older versions usually appear on magazine cover disks when a new version is to be released. It has quite a good reputation and boasts the usual document compatibility with Microsoft Office 97/XP. Of course, compatibility usually falls over if you use the more complex features of Microsoft Office, especially macros written in Visual Basic for Applications. This is true of most Office compatible products so this is no reason to reject Ability Office. In the Windows world, Ability Office is one of the most suitable small footprint Microsoft Office equivalent products. Open Office Org is probably superior and free of charge, but it is a much larger package in size and has issues with speed. The only question is what version of Ability Office will Tesco provide?

Like Microsoft Office, the Ability Office suite comes in various sizes dependent on whether it is the basic suite, professional suite, etc. Only the basic suite has a price tag close to £20. Ability Office includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation package as well as a photo painter package, although not all these items are in the basic suite.

Formjet provide a number of security products - again depending on whether you just want anti-virus or whether you want to combat all varieties of malware. The security software is that which goes under the name of Panda.

It is hard to know what Tesco intend to provide for photo editing. Maybe it is the package in the Ability Office suite or maybe it is the separate product, Image Broadway, that Formjet also distribute.

Even more difficult to determine is the CD/DVD burning software to be provided. Formjet do not provide such a package and I am wondering if the press have got the wrong information on this one. Windows XP already has a limited capability to burn CDs and most PCs come with an OEM CD burning package, so the need for Tesco to provide something else is not obvious.

I wish Tesco good luck in their entry into the software market - although they are doing nothing more than WH Smith, PC World, Woolworth and Staples have been doing for some time.

MICROSOFT WINDOWS VISTA COMBATS PIRACY

Do you know anybody who has a pirate copy of Windows XP? A few months ago Microsoft shipped a special update via their Windows Update site, without telling anybody. It is called Windows Genuine Advantage, (WGA). It should be called Windows Non-Genuine Disadvantage. What this package does is to check whether the Windows on the PC is a paid for copy. If it thinks it isn't then it displays pop ups to encourage you to buy a genuine copy of Windows XP. It is not easy to get rid of the pop ups or the tool that creates them and they keep returning. Consequently it makes using the pirate copy of Windows a pain. Since the introduction of WGA the hackers and Microsoft have been in a war. The hackers release code to get round WGA and then Microsoft modify how WGA works. The problem with WGA is that it has detected some genuine copies of Windows XP as pirate.

This last week, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista will come in-built with a similar tool. This time it will not generate irritating pop ups. It will turn off some of the new facilities of Windows Vista. If the tool thinks you have a pirate copy of Windows Vista it will leave you with just the basic version of Vista - even if you thought you had bought a premium copy.

When Microsoft announced this tool they were at pains to describe how making pirate copies of Vista is wrong and has a negative effect on Windows developers and development. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, I have only one thing to say about that. Linux distributions can be copied freely and the code changed as much as you like. It does not seem to have hindered the development of Linux.


 

 

 

 


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