R.I.P Office Accounting :( | The Coffeehouse

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

var dp = from p in MS.Products

where p.Dead = true

select p;

ObjectDumpter.Write(dp);

Microsoft Money

Microsoft Encarta

Windows OneCare

Soapbox

Windows Live Events

Microsoft Recite

Office Accounting

To bad, I thought it had some nice features and some promise. QB will never add .Net api with linq support now Sad

The guy actually said "we have determined that other Microsoft offerings such as free templates in the Office system used with Excel (can be used instead)..." He actually said that? You got to be kidding me... I think you quit to early on this one.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

You forgot Popfly.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

Let's see

- Windows OneCare is replaced with Microsoft Security Essentials

- Windows Live Events is replaced by Windows Live Calendar

- Microsoft Encarta is replaced by Wikipedia, no point competing with every person on the planet

- SoapBox is replaced by YouTube - but let's see if this is permanent, we may still see a SilverBox

- Microsoft Money + Office Accounting, don't know them but maybe they'll be folded into a new application?

- Microsoft Recite, don't know it

Ray7

Yes, this is the main reason I now steer clear of anything created by MS other than Office and Windows. No need to go through the hassle of moving your stuff to another program if you don't let yourself get caught out in the first place.

vesuvius
Das Glasperlenspiel

In reply to Ray7

#Oct 31st @ 12:26 AM

Sometimes Microsoft try to bolt the stable door after the horse has bolted, and the horse is Sage in this case (in Britain at least). It is the lingua franca for those that like to make Banks collapse and invoke economic crises.

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

Microsoft do have a nasty habbit of burning money on tons of side projects that aren't remotely proftable. The sad truth is however that they have the money to pull it off and not go under...

That being said, some of their side projects have done well - XBox and Hotmail for example

Sage is just HUGE. Every accountant knows how to use it already and they're the Microsoft of the accounting world.

PS - Has anyone ever seen a Biztalk rollout? I work in that general area and am yet to encounter one (including at Microsoft publishing themselves).

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

In reply to ManipUni

#Oct 31st @ 1:17 AM

Yea I've seen quite a few, including what was the world's largest at the time.

Doesn't mean I like BizTalk though Smiley

giovanni
...

I think Microsoft really needs to clean up its product line and concentrate on quality. Although I likes some of the products you mentioned, some have evolved (OneCare to Security Essentials) and some others have better alternatives today (Encarta vs. Wikipedia for example). In my personal opinion this is a good move.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

In reply to ManipUni

#Oct 31st @ 1:17 AM

Why is that a sad truth? I think it's great.

Google has institutionalized side-projects in its 20% time. Actually much of it doesn't look all that interesting but it beats loosing employees and having to buy their start-ups a couple of months down the line.

Ray7

Interesting that you mentioned the loss of Microsoft Money, because that has had a pretty serious knock-on effect in the UK that only came to light in the last few days.

The Nationwide Building Society has shut down their OFX servers because they say they can no longer support the format because they can no longer get help from Microsoft.

Here's the problem: lots of Nationwide customers used the same download for programs like MoneyDance, iBank, and sites such as Wesabe.

Very unfortunate.

Ray7

In reply to Bass

#Oct 30th @ 9:20 PM

Yes, you'd be pretty annoyed if you'd put any time and effort into that.

That's why I'm going with Flash, not Silverlight. Technical aspects aside, I want to be sure the technology is still going to be available a few years down the road.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

In reply to Ray7

#Oct 31st @ 2:26 AM

Actually, as long as there is YouTube and YouTube is the biggest provider of videos on the planet, I don't think it's likely to die. So if Microsoft has completely abandoned the idea of SoapBox I think they've made a serious miscalculation. Somehow I have more faith in them than that, misguided or not. Of course YouTube is just for videos (so far) and so doesn't really show off the Flash platform to any great degree but it's still an enormous poster child for the Flash platform.

That being said, I don't see any danger for Silverlight over the next many years. In fact it's doubly secured by its Linux implementation. If there was no YouTube or Vimeo I'd be even more inclined to say that. Given a YouTubeless world, what selling points does Flash really have over Silverlight. As an increasing number of people on the Web uses it, it becomes self-sustainable, sort of like HTML, to the point where it cannot be ignored but it's still possible to make a slow gradual shift.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

In reply to Ray7

#Oct 31st @ 2:26 AM

"That's why I'm going with Flash, not Silverlight. Technical aspects aside, I want to be sure the technology is still going to be available a few years down the road."

With SL in it's face, I would tend to worry more about Flash. Platforms are ms's dance floor, and they dance well.

rhm

I was looking at Office Accounting a while back - it was attractive not least of all because it had a free version and also because it's got a nice up-to-date UI. However, I had questions about Microsoft's committment to the UK market after they dropped Money here. Intuit had already stopped selling QuickBooks here as well. Decided Sage was the way to go because although the application looks like something from the early '90s, UK accounting is most of Sage's whole business so you can at least rely on them.

Bass
www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/

In reply to Ray7

#Oct 31st @ 2:26 AM

No I think Silverlight will be around for awhile even if it gets no real adoption simply because Microsoft really really wants to go back to the status quo of the later 90s / early 00s, and they will fight very hard for this to happen. This is when the WWW basically required Internet Explorer. If Silverlight gets any real adoption I expect them to drop the Mac port like it is stinky cheese.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

In reply to Bass

#Oct 31st @ 10:04 AM

"If Silverlight gets any real adoption I expect them to drop the Mac port like it is stinky cheese."

Not sure about that one. The consumer for SL is a developer that needs broad web reach (i.e. as many browsers as possible). That is the whole value proposition. No mac port would go against that goal and would make the product a less important for developers. If they could port to all linux/unix distros easily, they would do it tomorrow. Nobody can do that, but they can for a top few.

exoteric
I : Next<I>

In reply to staceyw

#Oct 31st @ 12:25 PM

If Mac developers start using Silverlight you are in effect prepping them for Windows (WPF) development as Silverlight is supposedly mostly a subset of WPF. So if they want to full experience there's only one platform and it's not the one they're sitting on Wink