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Softmaker Office 2016 released

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tomos:
^in fairness, apart from any changes, you're also paying for multiple service packs over the next few years. But yeah, it is the problem as described above (how to get revenue).

TaoPhoenix:
^in fairness, apart from any changes, you're also paying for multiple service packs over the next few years. But yeah, it is the problem as described above (how to get revenue).
-tomos (June 18, 2015, 05:40 PM)
--- End quote ---

The problem here for me is that it's drifting over into abusing truth-in-advertising. "____ Edition" to me, means a fairly big package, full of stuff, and yes, it happens to update the support.

I don't buy "new edition, same as the old edition, because it has new service packs". If it were called "bundle of 3 years of service packs", it wouldn't look as flashy now would it?

Revenue aside/sideways, it's also abusing the much older tech culture where we wanted to be on the cutting edge with betas, new editions, new features/tech/stuff. Now if we turn to a typical smart analyst we trust to vet it for us, and the report comes back "bleh, 2010 version is fine, this just adds Belgian language support", some of us who don't need the bleeding-with-a-razor-burn edition can just go our way satisfied that we have all the core features that matter.

tomos:
^ yeah, I'd say 2012 version is fine (2010 not). Having used it a fair bit though, I'm looking forward to minor changes in 2016 UI (some of which I requested).

TBH, it's mostly UI changes that interest me in upgrades - more often then not the new features are thing I dont use. (This applies to almost all the software I use.)

I still think you're being harsh on Softmaker in particular - as said, this is a problem for all software developers. I'm happy to pay for that "bundle of 3 years of service packs" - no matter how it's dressed up. And let's be honest, no software markets those three years of updates, but many do just that - and much of it very good software (Syncovery comes to mind). The other option is subscription which I dont want. Or free e.g. Libre Office, which, while good, is not up to the compatibility standards I need.

TaoPhoenix:
...
I still think you're being harsh on Softmaker in particular - as said, this is a problem for all software developers. I'm happy to pay for that "bundle of 3 years of service packs" - no matter how it's dressed up. And let's be honest, no software markets those three years of updates, but many do just that - and much of it very good software (Syncovery comes to mind). The other option is subscription which I dont want. Or free e.g. Libre Office, which, while good, is not up to the compatibility standards I need.
-tomos (June 19, 2015, 01:48 AM)
--- End quote ---

Well, it's a Softmaker thread so there's always the tug between specific and general.

"Epochal" software is only X % of the mix - the others are varying stages of in between. Certainly I am pondering the same overall theme across the sweep of software, office and not. And I'm certainly no Softmaker expert - I know almost nothing about it, except a quick glance a while back. And I'll take your word for "which year means what". "2010" came in fact from my experience of Microsoft Office 2010, which to me felt like a solid jump up from 2003 / via-tangentially  2007 / when they made it so you could custom design ribbons down to the micro-function almost anywhere in the program. So, to me, as a "way station", it felt to me like one of the "stopping points" that would have been "enough" over 2003, and then park there again. It also felt like a waystation before all the "cloud/saas/other" experiments began to go on there.

That's my overall strategy for upgrades - every X one has something new and powerful, and the kicker point is often the upgrade prices between two versions are more "mechanically" determined, making one upgrade the good value, the other only medium.

tomos:
Softmaker have uploaded a couple of reviews:

c't 15/2015

»Summary: "SoftMaker Office 2016 convinces with sheer speed and compatibility with Microsoft Office."

About TextMaker: "Exchanging documents in Word format works much better in TextMaker than in OpenOffice Writer. TextMaker renders all formatting, including the page layout, true to the original. Plus, TextMaker 2016 now also displays SmartArt graphics from Word 2007 and higher."

About PlanMaker: "Especially the introduction of pivot tables makes PlanMaker an interesting proposition for companies. Thanks to the improved conditional formatting, worksheets with huge columns of figures can now be formatted as clearly as in Excel."

About Presentations: "The new magic guides make it much easier to automatically align text frames, picture frames etc. exactly to other objects. The objects snap automatically to the magic guide."Tom's Networking Guide

»
In our tests, SoftMaker Office 2016 ran with breathtaking speed. Compatibility with Microsoft Office was very good – something that free applications such as OpenOffice cannot deliver at this level.

SoftMaker Office 2016 is the perfect alternative office suite if you value comprehensive technical support. This is an important issue when you use an office suite in your job, but especially if you deploy the software in corporate networks. Here, reliability and service play a pivotal role for network administrators.

The price-performance ratio of SoftMaker Office 2016 is excellent.

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