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Office 2007 Delayed Again

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the clippy's-triumphant-return dept.

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."

5 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Time to upgrade? by AsmCoder8088 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm still using Office '97!

  2. I tried it... by citizenklaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:I tried it... by SA3Steve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The 'data mining' effort? Do you mean where they are trying to get feedback on the program? It is a BETA release...where I would think the main idea is to get feedback.

      What was troublesome about the font changing mechanism? What didn't work about the terminal environment? What could be done to improve Outlook? Feedback is always welcome I would assume, but there isn't much that Microsoft can do without feedback explaining what you felt was wrong and how you feel it could be made better.

  3. Re:cue the obligatory joke: by saridder · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  4. Licensing 6.0 by nighty5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.