Microsoft has been steadily changing the format of their Office documents with every release of Microsoft Office. They have also not released the details of these formats, which means the only program that can reliably read the file you sent is the same version of Microsoft Office that you wrote it with (or newer). People with older versions of Microsoft Office, or people who don’t own any version, cannot reliably read these files.

This means we cannot exchange information until one of two things happens:

1. the information is sent to me in a standard format that I can read with a program of my choice.

2. I purchase and install the newest version of Microsoft Office (and anything else I need to run it).

I will not be doing the latter. A good standard format to use is the PDF, and I humbly request that you not send Microsoft Office attachments to anybody in the future. Some people may feel that not owning the latest version of Microsoft Office is somehow their fault.

(For more information, see http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html)

If you’re still using Microsoft Office, do yourself a favour and install LibreOffice.

Let’s start off: Skype is currently multi-platform. It’s available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, for Linux and Mac OS X, and for Android, iOS, Blackberry and Symbian. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has clearly stated that Skype will be continued for “non-Microsoft platforms”, but did not mention any specifically. He went on to state that limiting the userbase would reduce the value of Skype, which is completely true. However, it also works the other way – limiting Skype users to certain platforms reduces the perceived value of all other platforms.

My suspicion is that Microsoft will continue to support many platforms, but not all of them. I don’t think there’s any way they can drop support for Mac OS X without rendering Skype nearly worthless as millions of users switch to a different VoIP service. However, Linux doesn’t have nearly the installed userbase that the Macintosh has, and I suspect only a minority of Linux users are interested in Skype to begin with. I don’t believe that Skype for Linux holds much value, so I don’t think it’s very likely that Microsoft will continue to support it.

The second system to go will be Windows XP. Microsoft has been trying very hard to kill XP in recent times – just look at Internet Explorer 9 for an example. They want people to stop using XP for two reasons: because it’s holding up progress, and because they want to sell more Windows 7 licenses. Windows XP is still the most common operating system in the world, for the time being.

Lastly, I can’t see Microsoft funding work on Skype for Android. Google is probably Microsoft’s top rival, and Android is rapidly becoming one of the most popular mobile platforms. This product competes directly with the Windows 7 Phone. I’m predicting Microsoft will do whatever it can to curb the growth of Android, even at the cost of hurting Skype.

Don’t be too surprised to see Skype bundled with Windows Live Essentials and frequently pre-installed by manufacturers on all new Windows systems starting in a year or so. It’s the strategy Microsoft has used a dozen times before, with Office, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, MSN, and Windows itself. Microsoft is fully aware that most people won’t know how to install a competing product, and it’s going to count on that to boost the usage of Skype. Once ubiquitous, they’ll use Skype to boost the rest of their products, from Windows 7 Phone to Windows Live and possibly even the Xbox.

A possibility that I’m not too sure about is embedding advertisements in the Skype client. Microsoft doesn’t seem to object to this practice, as they’re willing to do it to MSN users, but adding ads after Skype has been ad-free for years may result in a nasty backlash from the userbase. There’s no doubt that ads would make Skype more profitable in the short term, but it may have the side-effect of making it less of a weapon in the long term.

Has Microsoft overpaid for Skype? Probably, but not by too much. It may not have $8.5 billion immediate value, but with proper abuse, it could turn out to be the very thing Microsoft needs to catch up to its competitors. You Skype users out there had better hope they don’t mutilate it too badly.

IE8 follows in the proud Internet Explorer tradition of being confused. It tries really hard to emulate the great features that Firefox and Opera have had for years now, but it also continues to support the computer-illiterate Windows users that make up the majority of its user base. That’s admirable in a sense — Microsoft can’t be expected to alienate their customers, after all — but it holds Internet Explorer back from being the great browser it really could be. With IE8, I really feel like the browser could be great with a few adjustments — something a robust community could fix, a la Firefox’s extensions. Internet Explorer 8 does have a built-in extension system, but it’s hidden deep in “Internet Options”, so no one ever notices it’s there.

What extensions there are for IE8 are not even really “extensions” in the Firefox sense. Most of them are the same common plugins that we’ve had for the last decade, such as a Flash player and Java. The only extension worth anything is IE7Pro, though it doesn’t have full support for IE8 yet. When it’s completely up-to-date, however, it will be a must have — though it shouldn’t be, since it’s features should all be there by default. (Though I’ll concede that Firefox doesn’t have some of IE7Pro’s features by default either, extensions for it have been available and well-maintained for a very long time. Opera has all the features.)

It seems like Internet Explorer 8 tries to go the Opera route — that is, they try to not depend on the extensions, since they know there’s no community to keep the extensions alive. Opera accomplishes this quite well, but IE8 falls short of the mark for two seemingly paradoxical reasons:
1) many of the new features are implemented very poorly and get in the way
2) many of the new features are implemented so well that you think they don’t exist
Clearly the extensions system falls into the latter category, since hardly anyone seems to realise it exists. The first category manifests itself a lot by cluttering IE’s horrendous default theme. As an example, let’s compare IE8′s default context menu (left) to Firefox 3′s (right).

Notice how the IE8 menu is almost twice as huge, but offers no more features than Firefox’s menu. That’s a serious design flaw. The tab bar has a similar problem — almost half of it is covered by buttons that serve very little purpose, right underneath a “favorites” bar that is practically empty. Is there any reason that we couldn’t use that enormous favorites bar to place some of the unnecessary buttons? I think the tab bar needs the space far more than the favorites bar.

Amongst IE8′s new features is InPrivate, which is just like Chrome’s Incognito mode. A solid addition, though I have no real use for it. Just like Chrome, IE8 offers no means of opening an InPrivate session in a new tab rather than a new window. (I guess we’ll have to wait until Firefox and Opera do that before Microsoft will add it to Internet Explorer.) Another new feature that’s actually unique to IE is the homepage system. IE8 allows you to set multiple homepages and have them all open in tabs, just like every other big browser nowadays. Microsoft decided to make it more user friendly by adding a little menu to the home button, complete with “add new homepage” buttons and everything. I have to compliment the development team for that one — it’s a brilliant way to incorporate a good feature without sacrificing the computer-illiterate users who would otherwise be confused.

I guess this post is more a list of random complaints than it is a proper review, but oh well. Internet Explorer 8 is another step in the right direction from Microsoft, but it’s still not a great browser. Stick to Firefox.