MS Office, online messaging and (more) Anthony Horowitz

I must admit, Microsoft Word may be ubiquitous, (almost) intuitive to use, and much the only word processor I use. But Mr. Gates, since I've two home desktop computers and a notebook, is it really necessary to pay for three copies of Office? Sure, we don't want Evil Men in ragged clothes, eye-patches and parrots on their shoulders getting away with distributing the stuff without paying, but forcing customers to 'activate' a product on installation, well, just smacks of "Dear Mr. Customer Sir, since you've got these fancy-schmanzy CD-RW drives, you have the capacity to take part in criminal activity, so let's not get any ideas, shall we?"
(To which I'm tempted to reply, "Dear Mr. Man In The Street, you've a biological endowment that gives you the capacity to be involved in a sexual crime. Please report to the police station at once.")
And what's that about the Works word processor that never seems to open my Word documents properly? Are Works users really so hard-up they need a smaller processor all to themselves? But then again, since all my games run only on Windows it doesn't look like I've a choice besides paying the Almighties off time after time.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure this online messaging thing works for me. I care deeply about the Personal Touch, that sort of thing you feel when sharing a coffee with someone across the table and talking about anything from Christ to cookies. Of course, it's great for just that--instant messaging. Like, "Meet me at McDonald's Tampines at 3", "Call me tonight", etc. The day it totally replaces face to face communication will be a sad day indeed, even with all these bells and whistles like animated smileys (or is it smilies???) that look like, well, smiling faces trying to look sad or embarrassed or whatever while staying optimistically cheerful.

No wonder I can never think of stuff to say online.

But it's nice to see the printed page still alive and well. My cousin gave me a copy of Anthony Horowitz's The Falcon's Malteser, and it's a fun romp through the casefiles of the world's most inept private detective. I won't spoil the plot by revealing it here, but it's good--one of the few books combining serious run-for-your-life action with first-rate jokes. Maybe someday I'll tackle the rest of the series, along with his new, much darker Power of Five novels. It's always good to learn from the masters.

More soon...