Using MS Office for Mails
Fri, Sep 21, 2001; by Oliver Breidenbach.
Yesterday, we had 10000 attacks by the new computer virus. I think it is time to start a campaign to educate people not to use Microsoft Office for Mails. Here are the arguments:
- In using Word or Excel attachments, you are asking your business partners to pay Microsoft a hefty fee for doing business with you.
Some people argue that "everyone has Word". This is not correct. More acurately, "everyone has a copy of Word" which means they mostly pirated it. Microsoft is making this harder to do, so more likely, in the future, fewer people "have Word" and more are "forced to buy Word" in order to do business with you. Also remember there may be potential customers that can not afford an Office license.
- Using Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachments adds a lot of overhead to your mail message which uses up expensive and valuable network bandwidth
Although bandwidth gets cheaper and more readily available, the effect is almost nulled out by sending larger data packets. Even though my lines have improved dramatically, it still takes about the same time to download all my mail since more and more people use large attachments.
- Using Office attachments is a huge security risk for the recipient of your mail. Would you open a package that says "mail bomb" on the outside? Yet using Office attachments, you force your business partners to do just that.
There are ways to protect yourself from these e-terrorist attacks. However, they cost money and resources that would not needed to be spent if you would not use Office attachments.
- Using Office attachments is the cause for most virus epidemics. This causes your business partner additional pain in doing business with you.