I wish it were that simple. But Office is a virtual monopoly, and the
legions of employess that work for organizations that standardize on it have
no vote.

I suppose the executives are "in touch" if the company remains profitable,
but the out-of-touchTushar Mehta's of Microsoft are giving me tremendous
encouragement to support and buy alternative products at least for home use.
How hard can it be to add an INTERPOLATE function? 2 hours of programming
time maybe?

At any rate, thanks for your humbling rebuttal to Tushar.

"Harlan Grove" wrote:

tskoglund wrote...
....
Shame on the Excel managers for screwing up on this one. Apparently they've
lost touch. Too bad the competition isn't stronger to shake them up a little
bit.
....

Never, ever accuse Microsoft of losing touch until you see their
revenues
decline quarter-to-quarter for a full year. Microsoft does what it
needs to do
AND NO MORE in order to keep the revenues flowing. The history of the
last two
Office 'upgrades', at least from the Excel perspective, is that they
don't
need to do much to get companies and individuals to upgrade. It'd be
irrational for them to do more. The irrational parties are anyone who
upgraded
from Office 2000.

You're absolutely right about the benefits of competition. The only
good news
here is that Microsoft did such a good job with its older versions
compared to
the dearth of new/interesting features in the the two latest versions
that
they do face competition . . . from their own older versions.

You want to make Microsoft actually WORK for their money? Don't upgrade
to
Office 2006, especially if it requires an OS upgrade to do so.