Gavin McCullagh wrote:
>Hi,
>>On Fri, 09 Jan 2004, Nick Murtagh wrote:
>>>>>One of the reasons people stick with Word is that it's "easy" - it's
>>probably installed on their computers already, and they become familiar
>>with it.
>>>>>>Absolutely. Some are even under the impression that it's an inherent part
>of a computer. (Using MS Office)==(Using PCs)
>>>>>DRM makes things "difficult" - and people won't use it unless they are
>>forced to.
>>>>>>Perhaps. Lots of quoted features of MS Office that stop people moving away
>are "difficult" to use though, eg VB Macros.
>>>>>The introduction of DRM into Office won't force people to use it, and
>>won't stop Office users from being able to read non-restricted files from
>>OpenOffice users (and users of older versions of Office).
>>>>>>But the lack of it will basically shut the corporate world off using
>OpenOffice. It's the perfect "but what if", nice and vague, probably
>hasn't much real effect but if OOo can't support it and anyone in the
>company is using it, OOo cannot be relied upon to read files. Of course an
>IT manager choosing not to use DRM will be accused of risking company
>security.
>>I don't know how MS Office DRM is supposed to work but I presume keys will
>be available to groups within the company and you click "DRM encrypt for
>this group" which will "guarantee" it unreadable to anyone else. Actually,
>I can see lots of power users going for that. Like the macros, it's got
>enormous lock-in potential, despite few people really making much use of
>them.
>>>It's linked in with users and groups on Windows Server for DRM 2010 or
whichever one. So in order to use it, you have to have an up to date
Windows Server
kicking around, and also connected to the internet if you have any remote
users.
It's not a guaranteed thing at this point. The server upgrade and
commensurate
upgrades everywhere else (Oh, you want server 2003, well, all your clients
have to be XP etc) make it an expensive job for anyone not completely up to
date. And for some companies (money related ones) they can't have emails
suddenly
decide they're unreadable. They're required to keep them for X number of
years.
L.
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