Microsoft Office 2003 - Reviews, Overviews, Issues

securitas writes "The first users of Microsoft's Office 2003 are weighing in and the response is mixed. The new Outlook has received a favorable response, but the mantra seems to be there's little reason to upgrade unless you absolutely need the new features. Meanwhile, Bill Gates dismissed the open source competition. One of the new features - self-destructing documents - seems to have caused some confusion, because 'Microsoft says the new feature is not designed to remove all traces of a file' and MS spokesman Mike Pryke-Smith says, 'The message will still be in various places', so emails will not cleanly self-destruct. A related issue is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management, which may shut out Mac users. PC World has a detailed review of Office 2003 which sums things up well."

Comments

Mac users?

[BWJones]

A related issue is the permissions technology called Information Rights Management, which may shut out Mac users.

So, I have been hearing this concern raised a number of times, and I have to wonder....Why has Microsoft not taken the time or made the effort to answer the question? Their Mac business unit is one of the most profitable divisions, so one would think that this concern would have made it up the corporate ladder.

Bloatware

[Grimster]

I haven't had a need for MS Office in a long time, ok so I need to type a document, 9 times outta 10 I can get by with a basid editor like notepad or wordpad, need to make something a little heavier? An invoice or bid? OpenOffice does a decent enough job, hell I don't even use a handful of all the features OO has either even when I'm making something "professional" (aka business related) and when I save I usually use the lowest common denominator so I can be assured the recipient can read it (however I typically fax the document anyway).

Maybe I'm a minority but even if I were given a copy of MS Office I wouldn't even bother installing it.

Who's server?

[BrynM]

From the article:

"Each user's version of Word will access the central server to determine how that person is allowed to use the document."

So if I'm sending an e-mail publicly, like to say Bill Gates who's server is doing this authentication? Is it MS Passport... er, .Net? Any beta testers here?

Self-destructing documents?

[maxmg]

This is not a new feature - all office versions I have ever used had this. And, while not removing all traces of the document, they rendered it completely unusable.

This is definitely an area in which the open source products need to catch up!

BTW, the only reliable way to recover at least most of the content of Office-self-shredded documents that I have found was to open them with OpenOffice.org, which does a much better job at reading partly corrupted files.

All hail the King!

[Gilmoure]

...the king of floating document formats. Once again, Microsoft is changing it's formats, in an attempt to force users to upgrade their software, as well as lockout 3rd party apps and OS's.

Here at my college, we have had such a problem with various Word formats (from student and faculty home machines) that we're pushing saving as RTF. The problem with this is that there's a large segment of users out there that have no clue as to what a file format is, much less why they should go to any further trouble than just hitting save.

There's always several, usually at the end of a term, who can't print from their computer and need a paper printed up (class is in 5 minutes). Said paper is done on some 5 year old Romanian version of Office Works Lite and nothing else but Office 98 on a Mac can read it.

'Course I don't have a floppy disk on my Mac and have to walk across campus (with wailing student in tow-"I need this for class or I'll fail!") to the Mac lab and then spend 5 more minutes (that I could be surfing pr0n or taking over the world in SMACX) explaining that the print button on the tool bar really does do the same thing on a Mac, and yes, it is pretty, just print your friggin' paper, you overpaying, coddled, mama's child!

OpenOffice and LAMP

[mcrbids]

This "Authentication Server" that MS is pushing on the corporate suits sounds kind of neat... but why couldn't this be implemented in a few afternoons for OO using LAMP?

It's a rather simple problem: A user with some kind of credentials opens a document, to find that it's encrypted.

Within the document is a reference to the authentication server that has the certificate needed to decrypt the file. The user's credentials are then passed to the server (a-la XML over SSL/HTTPS) and the credentials are either sufficient (and the server passed back the certificate) or they aren't and the file remains unreadable.

I see the problem as:

1. Open Office needs to require credentials.
   
2. Open Office needs a saving filter.
   
3. A rudimentary certificate manager in Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP needs to be written.
   
4. ...???
   
5. Profit!!!!
   

Really - what's the big deal here?

Encrypted documents a new virus path?

[Animats]

Virus scanners and firewalls can't examine encrypted or self-destructing Office documents. So this could provide a new way for Office-based attacks to bypass defenses.

Word XML

[decipher_saint]

Let's not forget about Word XML (and it ain't just BLOB!), say what you will, but I've been developing with their schema for some time and it's covering all the bases when it comes to Word I/O (which is 90% of the company I work for's income!).

Now if somehow we can get Microsoft to adopt XForms 1.0 (booyah!!!) and drop InfoPath I think everyone will be happier. Or wait, did Slashdot have a story on XForms 1.0 (!?! I hope they did and I just missed it!)

Obvious answer

[jeti]

The authentification will be done by a server chosen by the author.

Anyone can set up his own server or maybe use a thirdparty provider. And the authentification server will not see the documents themselves, but will receive a document hash and the public key of the reader.

I'm not sure whether access rights will be stored on the server or in the document header. The first variant would allow you to change permissions retroactively. But if you loose the data on the server, you'll be in trouble.

I don't have any special knowlwge about what MS is doing. But the described approach sound most sensible to me.

Re:Self Destructing Documents?

[steveha]

I think the general idea is to control who can see the document. And the implementation requires that your run the digital restrictions management server (Windows Server 2003).

So instead of shred(1), the equivalent free software solution is to set up a *NIX server and keep the documents on that. Set up a remote graphics protocol (X11 or VNC) so that workers can log in to look at the documents under control. Don't set up any kind of network file system; keep those files bottled up. Use *NIX security to control which users can read which files, and which users can edit which files (using tools on the server, of course).

You could even set up some sort of groupware to run purely on the server; email, or maybe even a one-computer USENET!

This won't control emails sent outside the company, but then, nothing really will.

The best part is that the free software solution will cost so much less than Windows Sever 2003 plus all the client licenses. It'll run on much cheaper hardware, too.

steveha

Re:Silk?

[10Ghz]

OpenOffice is terrible

I was writing my final thesis with MS Word. At home I used Word 97, at work I used Word 2000. Suddenly I noticed that I could not edit the document at home anymore. If I tried to open it, it would compain that "The document has embedded fonts in it and can't be edited" (or something along those lines). I could read it, but not edit it. At work, it still worked.

Frustrated, I installed OpenOffice 1.1 and tried to open the file. It worked perfectly! Not a single problem! I made some changes to the document and saved it under a new name. Imagine my surprise when I noticed the filesize of the new document: About 65KB! the exact same document saved by MS Word was over 600KB in size! The settings and layout were identical on both, the OO-version had few changes here and there (nothing major, mostly corrected typos and the like), and they difference in filesize was about 1:10!

After that, I can safely say that MS Office is terrible!

Crap. And it will take over

[swordgeek]

I use openoffice. Everyone I know is moving to openoffice at home. Even the ones that use MS office don't pay for it.

But Bill Gates knows something that most people overlook: He knows that selling to home users is irrelevant! All he needs to do is come up with some reason to force companies to upgrade, and they will. DRM isn't a reason, it's just a lockdown "feature" to make everything else less viable. The real upgrade force push comes from two directions:

1) Lack of format compatability. Once someone starts using it and sending out files, everyone will need it or not be able to read the files.
2) The basic nature of companies is to upgrade and turn over equipment, over time.

Bill will win this one. And the next one. And the next one...