
Some of these have greater inherent portability than Office. This could mean
that they might be more adaptable in the future as business technology
evolves. Microsoft could find itself having to dig ever deeper into its pockets to
maintain Office’s dominance. As long as Intel continues to produce CPU
chips with instruction sets that are backward compatible, Microsoft Office
(and for that matter, Microsoft Windows itself) will be relatively inexpensive
to port. If someone came out with a machine so advanced that everyone
wanted its capabilities even if it weren’t Intel-compatible, Microsoft would
face the gargantuan task of porting Windows and Office ...