MS Office is vulnerable because it is a cobbled-together collection of products with "interoperability" pasting them together in the illusion of a single product. The paths to hack the products are the same as the paths to use them together. Add to that the crumbling foundation of Windows upon which most installations of Office are built, and you have a tinderbox. Until MSFT limit interoperation and disgorge the registry, their products will be easy targets for firebugs.

Anyone out there knows whether MS will ship some security service pack for Office 2000? I mean... the sole reason why I would want to upgrade would be the security holes reported against it (mostly the same ones that haunt 2003 and 2007).

Otherwise I am perfectly happy with office 2000. Especially Frontpage 2000.

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Anyone out there knows whether MS will ship some security service pack for Office 2000? I mean... the sole reason why I would want to upgrade would be the security holes reported against it (mostly the same ones that haunt 2003 and 2007).

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...And the question is: What are the odds of Microsoft supporting older software instead of forcing customers to "buy a patch"...?

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Otherwise I am perfectly happy with office 2000. Especially Frontpage 2000.

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...And it's exactly that sort of thinking that has kept them from their rightful place as overlords of the universe...!

Nathan's comment about multiple apps cobbled together applies to most productivity suites.

People want the ability to move data between applications without having to first save them to a file. Open Office is much the same.

Much of the weakness is just how powerful Microsoft made the macro and data access functionality. Power users can get a lot out of these features, but they are a risk to those who don't use them.