According to yesterday's Crimson, a crisis has been brewing up in Cambridge ever since Harvard computer labs upgraded to Microsoft Word 2007. Scared and confused students complain that the upgrade "has created incompatibility problems and is difficult to navigate."
Such fear is understandable, since the new Word strikes at the very self-identity of Harvard undergrads: after all, their successful admissions essays were .doc masterpieces in 12-point Times New Roman—what right does this Bill Gates dropout have to now insist on 11-point "Calibri" with a .docx file extension?!
"Chioma J. Madubata '11 said she found it frustrating that her freshman seminar professor was unable to open a paper she had written in Word 2007 because the professor's version of the program was incompatible with the new version's saved files....'When I opened [Word] I was just really surprised--why do they have to change it like this?' Madubata said." Why, indeed? Only time will tell if the campus unrest to come will be more like the Windows '98 riots or the May '68 ones.
New 'Word' Frustrates Users [Harvard Crimson]