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Under the Hood of Office 12

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the more-xls-with-unusable-macros dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has posted an FAQ on Office 12, plus a quick preview of Office 12 pre-Beta 1. From the review: Microsoft Office 12.0 pre-Beta 1 drastically revamps the interface layouts of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. More than a year before the final product will hit the shelves, a pre-beta version of Microsoft Office 12.0 is revealing radical interface changes and user paradigm shifts that recall the overly ambitious Microsoft Office 97 update of the past."

3 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Competition driving innovation by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...or the appearance of innovation, anyway.

    Interesting tightrope Microsoft is being forced to walk here...if they don't change things enough, they still have OpenOffice and StarOffice nipping at their heels, but if they change too much, they risk alienating their established user base.

    The real question is: Just how much can you improve an office suite, before it's 'good enough'? Many Office users (my employers included) feel Office 2003 is just fine, and have no plans whatsoever for Office 12. Other offices I've seen have standardized on Offive XP, or even Office 2000, and steadfastly refuse to upgrade. When these holdouts finally do upgrade, it's only because they are having issues with using documents from other facilities that are in the new format (non-backward-compatible by design...thank you so much, Bill), and when they do, they commonly skip at least one release.

    The bottom line is that the strategy of staying out ahead of competitors like OpenOffice and StarOffice is becoming increasing untenable as the office suite becomes more and more complex and capable, and closer and closer to the ideal of 'good enough' for the average user.

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    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. Nothing beats Office 97 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing will ever top Office 97 for what it brought the table when it came out. They made it too good - several versions later and most people probably can't tell the difference, except for Outlook, which has changed more than the other apps in the suite. Is it possible that we don't need new versions of Office coming out every couple years anymore?

  3. This will call for extra training by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The radical change that M$ is introducing in Office 12 will call for training. I vividly remember what effect Office 95 had on our users.

    The trouble here is that more of technology pundits will not see this requirement as an additional cost burden at all! So when it comes to comparing Office 12 to StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, assumptions will be made that those using M$ products already have the training.

    StarOffice/OpenOffice.org programmers could capitalize on this, save companies the trouble or burden of training. This is not to mention licensing costs not forgetting closed and changing formats.