Category: Writing

Microsoft Releases Office 2008 Prices: Panic and Confusion Engulfs World

Yesterday Microsoft announced the pricing for Office 2008, due out January 15th. The prices are as follows:

$150 gets you the Home and Student Package which at least gives you Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It *may* come with Entourage but it will not allow you to connect to an Exchange server.

$400 gets you the Home and Student Package plus the ability to connect to an Exchange server in a SKU called Office 2008 Professional.

$500 gets you all of the above plus some fancy media organizing package no one knows jack shit about right now. My feeling is this will come in handy for people who make media-heavy presentations. Like Steve Jobs.

Naturally, this got the Internets going on Microsoft releasing too many confusing SKUs when one will do. I don’t see that in this case. The Home edition is for people who need more out of a suite than iWork provides. For roughly double the price you get about three times the features. Yes, yes, I know some of you are perfectly happy with Text Edit. $150 for a package that gives you close-enough-for-government-work-guaranteed compatibility with Office users is a good deal.

The $400 version is really a $250 tax on being a corporation and needing to connect to an Exchange server. I find this reasonable, especially since volume pricing drives the price down quite a bit anyway. What’s that, you say? The poor college kid that needs to connect to the campus Exchange server has to shell out all that extra cash? Um, no. You see the “real” student price for Office 2004 is actually less than the Apple Education price for iWork. Through my University I can get Office 2004 Student for $68, and the Pro version for $80. Assuming those prices are inline with the 2008 pricing, college students can get Office 2008 Professional for about $80.

While I’ve switched a lot of my general word usage to Pages, I’ll be getting this day one. I’ll be damn glad I can get the student price on it though. Do I *look* like I’m crazy enough to spend $400 just so I can connect to the Exchange server at work?

Guild Wars and MMO review cycles

I wrapped the *Guild Wars: Eye of the North* review this weekend. While I can’t comment on what’s in the review it did make me think about MMO reviews in general.

I wrapped the *Guild Wars: Eye of the North* review this weekend. While I can’t comment on what’s in the review it did make me think about MMO reviews in general.

MMOs are a huge time sink—it’s in their nature and I don’t have a problem with that. The goal is too keep you playing, even a non-subscription game like *Guild Wars*. Finishing a review, though, gives me an odd form of closure; when I’m done with the review, I’m done with the game. *LOTRO*? Loved it. Only logged in once or twice after the review. Same thing with *Auto Assault*. When I wrapped the *Burning Crusade* review it was a few months before I logged into *WoW*—and was a combination of it running on my MacBook, an awesome guild, and the ability to get something done in an hour or so.

The industry is either shoving games out the door so fast you can’t think straight or they aren’t putting any out. It is not unusual for me to have reviews stacked up like planes at O’Hare National. January had *Burning Crusade* and *Vanguard* back-to-back and *LOTRO* wasn’t far behind. Usually when I do 2-3 MMO reviews in a row, I get burned out on them for a bit and by the time the urge strikes to play one again, well, heck, there’s another one that needs to be reviewed. So, as much as I loved the game during the review, the cycle the dictates I’m likely to not to do much with it afterwards. Even though I live in the world of Fun Tax Deductions keeping a lot of subscriptions going isn’t feasible (yay for companies that comp press!).

*Guild Wars* has always straddled that line. It’s free and, thus, well clear of the Anger Spouse With More Fees issue. But, it’s hit the Closure rule where I finish the review but make a note that I need to finish up a few things when the urge strikes—clear off some side quests, etc.. Which is where I’m at now. I’ve beaten *EotN*, but there’s a bunch of content I didn’t see. There’s bits from the older chapters I haven’t seen either. I’d like to think I’ll follow up in a month or so and cross them off my list. Since one of the driving forces on playing old games is if it’s something I’ll need for a future review, and *EotN* is the last of the *Guild Wars* line, I doubt I will. Besides, *Tabula Rasa* ships in a month…

Going back to school

I went to back to school last week part-time for technical communications with two writing-related courses on the agenda: Tech Writing (intensive) and College English Workshop. For the English class, I have two main semester-long duties: writing a 10-page research paper, and writing about 400 words/week in a journal. Blogs count, so I’m using this opportunity to blog more.

The research paper topic is going to be on how the show 24 has affected American’s opinion on torture. For a long time it seems American’s have viewed themselves as being the “good guys” and the “good guys” don’t torture people—that’s the “bad guys” job. Since Jack Bauer, the lead character in 24, routinely tortures people because he doesn’t have the time to ask them nicely and the show receives both high ratings and critical acclaim, I’m curious how American’s view torture against the context of the show.

The hardest part is going to be finding sources. I need at least seven sources, and I’ve found some decent ones: an article in which Justice Scalia is quoted as saying that Bauer would never be prosecuted and that extreme times call for extreme measures. I’ve found articles in which Pentagon and West Point officials have visited the producers telling them to lighten up a tad since apparently military people are using Jack Bauer as a training manual. Those are soft sources and I need to find some harder ones, which means I’ll need to nail down the topic and thesis into something I can find academic sources on, which may prove difficult for something entertainment-based.

I’m looking forward to this; the last time I had to write a research paper was almost 20 years ago. Since I’ve been writing professionally for a while, I do not doubt my ability to do the work, but I’m curious how the standards for academic writing differ from writing for publication. When writing for publication, I’ve found the criteria seems to go: 1) on-time, 2) doesn’t take up too much of my editor’s time, and 3) good. I expect academia standards are a tad different, but I actually wouldn’t be surprised if they were that much different: “Hmm, looks like Mr. Crump handed in his assignment on time. That’s a bonus. Looks like I won’t need go through five red pens marking this one up, either, and whaddya know, it’s actually fairly decent.” But I have a nagging feeling it’s going to be much different.

Update to Word Processors

I checked out NeoOffice and while they claim it’s a lot faster on loading, it still feels like it loads slower than Word via Rosetta. Plus the interface is still ugly, and I’m not happy with how it does commenting (you need to mouseover the highlighted text). So that’s out of the running still.

For my personal writing, I checked out Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com) and it looks like a fine, but complicated app. One feature I do enjoy is the notecards, where you can storyboard out an idea and change the order of the cards–very similar to how you’d do it with real 3×5 cards.

In the end, it looks like I’m sticking with Word for a while. I forgot Omni Outliner came with my Macbook and an initial tour of its features and ease-of-use was impressive, so I’ll give it a shot outlining story I’m working on.

Not happy with any OSX Word Processors

By and large, I have simple needs when it comes to word processing. All I really need is: Intel Native code that runs fast; commenting and footnoting (and maybe TOC), and a default save option that is a Word compatible file format–RTF is acceptable.

So far, all of my options are “pick any two.”

MS Word
– Not Intel native, so runs a tad pokey under Rosetta.
+ Does commenting
+ Native file format that can be read on the PC.

Apple Pages, part of the iWork suite
+ Intel Native and runs quite fast
+ Does commenting quite well
– Default save is in a proprietary format

Nisus Express
+ Intel Native and runs well
– No commenting
+ Default save is in RTF

NeoOffice
– While Intel Native, runs no faster than Word in Rosetta
– Does commenting, but the comments aren’t inline
+ Native file format is PC-compatible.

Right now, I’m sticking with Word as the lesser of two evils. I really liked how quick and easy Pages was, and may still use it for documents I’ll never need to send out–DVD Cases and the like. Nisus is coming out with a Pro version soon that may incorporate commenting. Office is coming out with an Intel version later this year, but it’s using the non-backwards-compatible file formats that Word 2007 use. So, while I’m likely to get that as well, having to do a save-as is going to be a pain in the ass. NeoOffice is coming out with a new version next week and I’ll have to see if it is any faster.

As a writer, I really need to gel with my word processor. OSX has a lot of features that make my life so much more productive, it’s just a shame I can’t get a word processor to do what I think are three simple items.

Fare thee well, CGM.

Computer Games Magazine and its sister publication Massive Magazine were ended yesterday. While the Internet is kicking a lot of print magazines ass, that’s not the case here. Long story short: CGMs parent company, The Globe, got hit with a summary judgement as a result of MySpace suing them for spamming their customers. Rumors are the judgement is between $40-120 million. As a result, The Globe shut down damn near everything, including CGM.

It’s a shame. In addition to writing for them I always enjoyed the magazine. Steve Bauman, the EIC, may well be the hardest working man in the print business. I believe CGM had more edit pages than PC Gamer and put the magazine out with just two people, and the other person, Cindy Yans, left to freelance so Steve and the freelancers were it.

The truly sad part of the tale is it is not due to failing subscribers, the internet, or anything Steve had any control over. Just a messed up parent corporation that he is paying the price for their stupidity. What’s worse that stupidity isn’t even justifiable. I could see it if they expanded into a market that was a bad idea, but they were just fucking spammers.

Ding, 60

Not that it matters much anymore, but I hit level 60 in World of WarCraft‘s expansion, Burning Crusades. Now that they’ve upped the level cap to 60, it’s about as notable as day-old bagels. But, yay, go me!

It’s been a busy few weeks getting those levels, and once I wrap the BC review next week it’ll be on to the Vanguard review.

Update

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve updated. Insert obligatory “sorry I haven’t posted, I’ve been busy” comment.

In terms of published works since April, here’s a quick run-down: For Official Xbox Magazine:Final Fantasy XI review. PC Gamer published my reviews of Minions of Mirth, Face of Mankind, Auto Assault, Guild Wars: Factions, and the usual pairing of EverQuest-related reviews.

I’ve also been giving some thought to what I want to do with this site. While I’ll still be posting updates to my published articles, I’m also going to be posting periodic updates that aren’t just what got published recently. It’s also not going to be a blog in the personal sense. This isn’t a blog, per-se; they will be short articles around 500-700 or so words. I’m also not going to commit to a schedule—I’ll just be posting them when I’ve got some time.

Most likely first up will be a DragonCon report. I was down there this weekend and sat on a number of MMO-related panels.

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