- Monday, 9 November 2009
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Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal - Charles Darwin
China's Evermore Office suite takes off
CHINESE SOFTWARE vendor Evermore says individual downloads of its Office 2009 suite have taken off recently to reach 5.3 million units, local media in China reported Thursday.
Evermore attributes the increased consumer interest in its office productivity offering to a backlash against the Vole's aggressive "black screen " anti-piracy feature that the company launched on October 21st.
Microsoft's annoying nagware measure turns the computer user's screen black if it detects that they're running a pirated software copy.
Prominent Chinese computer experts including Ni Guangnan, an official with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, have called for Chinese computer users to use China's homegrown Evermore and Kingsoft office software instead of unlicenced copies of Microsoft products.
Evermore's Office 2009 product integrates word processing, spreadsheet and presentation functions within a single 30MB program, according to Cao Can, an Evermore VP. He claims the software is equivalent to Microsoft Office, can run under both Windows and Linux, and comes with free long-term support services.
Evermore Office 2009 reportedly sells to individual users for $99, which is much less than the cost of Microsoft Office.
Then again, Open Office 3.0 implements the Open Document Format (ODF) international standard, has both simplified and traditional Chinese language versions, runs under either Windows or Linux, and is available for download free of charge. ยต
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"Evermore Office 2009 reportedly sells to individual users for $99, which is much less than the cost of Microsoft Office." errrrrrrrrrrr, ya cant get much cheaper than free, as in pirated, which the vast majority of office applications are in china :O)

surely Evermore office is so popular in china cos they use their own document protocol, Uniform Office Format (UOF). which the government came up with so they could say up you M$hite, open office and the capatalist western world as a whole :O)
I wish the Europeans would show that much initiative! Instead, the EC is wasting time with fining Microsoft, for less than what Microsoft settles with companies like Sun, and the European Parliament appears to be completely incompetent when it comes to important issues like putting an end to software patents. Not to mention the role of the Europeans in the ISO OOXML debacle.
I fully expect China to have total control over its own software market in the future.
After all, I don't see how Microsoft can do better in making software compatible with their way of working and their culture.
And I fail to see why the Chinese should be enamoured with Western software. They are just coming to the Computer age, there is no pro-Microsoft opinion that is entrenched like it is over here.
It will be easy for China to persuade developers to work for their own - why develop for a foreign market of around a billion when you have more than that available in your own language ?
I don't know Evermore Office 2009 and Kingsoft Office but I know RedOffice 4.0, a Chinese software which is less expensive than Microsoft Office 2007.

http://en.redoffice.com.cn/
Up to now the Chinese haven't had much of an incentive to develop alternatives to MSFT products. Microsoft has given them that incentive. Way to go.....
Ok, so I was interested being the skeptic I am. I thought i would give this Kingsoft Office or Kingsoft Research KS09 ) a run for its little money. 100 days later and I am happy to announce I have just purchased my copy yesterday. It opened without problem all of my existing documents perfectly whilst preserving a familiar interface making it easy to use. Everyone interested in purchasing an office suite should at least take a peek.
These guys must have took the bull by the horns as soon as an opportunity arose to construct such a challenge to conventional belief.