...it's ODF; give it up and let's move on.

Quite why MS feels the need to kill-off interoperability in this way boggles the mind. If they make the best products, they will still be able to sell them on that basis and without the standards-killing lock-ins.

If they make the best products, that is.

MS is terrified of having to compete on the basis of ''best product''. A customer lock-in is the central part of its strategy.

Don't worry Microsoft can still make it hard for people to "interoperate" with random ODF errors...

Isn't having the end user locked in how MS has managed to get it's strangle hold on the world of PC software.

Only use MS office at work, even though I have a full licensed copy of 2003 and 2007 at home, prefer Open Office.

Microsoft are over a barrel this time. A lot of government organizations are starting to mandate support for "open formats" to prevent vendor lockin.

Since one of the biggest reasons for sticking with office is that massive compatability headache of the alternatives, a true standard would break this. It would also mean that Microsoft could also have to implement the standard properly... If there are 6 applications out there that render the same code the same way (and office does it differently), then they wouldn't be standard compliant and hit the hurdle of the government organisations again.

Whilst I'm in no way defending Microsoft, they are not doing this solely to kill ODF, they're doing this to save their own creaking application in a more direct method.

After all, they can still screw with the world with IE and slowing down/breaking anything that is competing with them. Or is the strategy to slow down/break international standards?

Microsoft loves you and only has your best interests at heart.

But you had to hurt Microsoft so terribly - and the emotional pain is the worst part of it - with Linux and *BSD.

You are bad people.

Why would you have two fully licensed copies of 2003 and 2007 at home and not use them, do you just enjoy giving hundreds of your hard earned cash to MS for nothing???

I do not fully understand the ODF vs OOXML standard debate, but the table in this blog on how OOXML writes one simple line of text with the word 'red' in a red font is very illustrative.

The 'ms standard way' to do 'red'.

Word: <w:color w:val="FF0000"/>

Excel: <color rgb="FFFF0000"/>

Powerpoint: <a:srgbClr val="FF0000"/>

The 'ODF way.

ODF text: <style:text-properties fo:color="#FF0000"/>

ODF sheet: <style:text-properties fo:color="#FF0000"/>

ODF presentaion: <style:text-properties fo:color="#FF0000"/>

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/disharmony-of-ooxml.html