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Office 2007 Delayed Again
Tyler Too writes "Ars Technica reports that Microsoft Office 2007 has been delayed again, this time into early 2007. 'Based on internal testing and the beta 2 feedback around product performance, we are revising our development schedule to deliver the 2007 system release by the end of year 2006, with broad general availability in early 2007.' Tough bit of timing after this week's online preview of Office 2007."
I'm still using Office '97!
Actually they should change from the year labels, that is so Windows 95. This naming scheme is also leaving them open for these jokes when they push back shipping dates.
Maybe they should just call it "Office V10", fewer crashes, with twice the big brother. Look here [slashdot.org] if you're unsure what I mean.
-PB_TPU_40 The trick to flying is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
I tried the beta this week. I went in with an open mind, actually I was quite eager to try the 'ribbon' thingy. My hopes where dashed by the shameful M$ data mining effort before accesing the demo.
I don't like it. Maybe is the learning curve, but doing basic stuff in Word (changing font size, for instance) was troublesome. The terminal environment didn't work either. And Outlook? Piece of crap. I for one will stay on my current version of OpenOffice, thank you.
the future is but past forgotten
Psychologically speaking, calling it Office (next version such as 2007) just sounds like an upgrade, and upgrades are tough ways to get companies to shell out money as MS has seen first hand. From a marketing perspective, Office Simple or Office Vista sounds like something new and might get companies to buy.
If it were me, I'd call it Office Live or something else to promote its collaborative features. In fact I'd call it anything but Office (next version) to try and break out of the upgrade cycle. I'd probably do studies and conduct research and find the optimal work that most consumers and business favorably responded to. Didn't they just hire some Walmart and Proctor & Gamble execs?
(of course, they could always be "old fashioned" and add some ground-breaking innovative features and functionality that create a new market so they wouldn't have to rely on marketing tricks).
--- RFC 1149 Compliant.
Only company I don't complain about pushing back release dates is Valve. (Might do the same for Blizzard, but newest I have of theirs is WC3:FT, and I haven't beaten it yet)
They've shown they can justify a delay because the product is GOOD.
Microsoft has not given me the level of confidence Valve has.
Microsoft is laughing all the way to the bank.
Not only have they locked in the vast majority of enterprise customers, they now have no pressure to deliver a product when they said they would.
This is classic Microsoft and their best.
Anyone that wants PDF or Blogging from Word probably has that without 2007.
No, not really.
PDF with Word you can get by either going through the hassle of installing a second printer subsystem, the frustration of getting a sub-par system for a modest fee, or the expense of buying a software package whose cost can equal that of Word.
Blogging -- there is no in-Word blogging for any system prior than 2007. Period. At best, you can get an ugly cut-and-paste that will either get you no benefit or just give you bloat.
And if you think that only tech-savy users want PDFs or Blogging, you've spent too much time navel gazing.