Slashdot Mirror
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."
Maybe it should be called Office 2008?
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
I'm still using Office '97!
Dang, they're going to miss the 2006 holiday season. Now what should I ask for for Christmas???
microsoft is just digging thier hole deeper and deeper. of course, the incentive to upgrade to office is typically called into question with each iteration; but after the vista delay media frenzy, this is probably not exactly what microsoft wanted.
Anything else, and we mean anything else is someone's speculation. There is no date. We don't know any date. If you have a friend who claims they have "inside info", or there's some office suite news site, or some computer store at the mall who claims they know - they do not. They are making it up. There is no date. Period.
And yes, we know the office suite has taken a long time. There's no possible joke you could make about the office suite's development time that we haven't already heard. :)
Except the one about us having bought out 3D Realms to redo the UI in Aero so it'll look cool under Vista, which is why their other project's a bit late, too.
Open Office 2.0.3 was released today for the low low cost of NOTHING :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/Imagine that. But maybe MS needs to hedge their bets in the future, like Windows Whenever or Windows WTF.
At this rate, if Microsoft is going to continue to license famous songs for their startup music, they should look at "Fly Like an Eagle"... time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin into the future ;)
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
... if this could be related to re-thinking that radical user-interface change that they've attached to Word. (I use a CAD program that adopted this kind of thing a few releases back and I still detest this, just like anyone with tendonitis would detest pointless extra mouse clicks.)
Beta preview is right the time that all their big corporate accounts would feedback "for the love of God, we're not retraining every person in the darn organization just to use Word. Now CHANGE IT BACK!"
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
You'll notice that they CARE about the people who use their product. People might give Office crap about how they keep pushing products back, but they only do it so you get the best product. Do you complain when Blizzard does it? :-P. It's worth it to wait.
You do?
Well, you shouldn't
work....
I very much enjoy using the ribbon. I think its a huge improvement in usability. If I wasn't using it in Parallels mostly and there was a Mac version, I'd use it definitely. I always liked Entourage, but I won't use it due to Rosetta (I only use PPC apps when I have no choice - with email I have a choice).
So while I love Outlook 2007 and Word 2007, I don't enjoy the speed. Its definitely slower. So I hope they work on that more.
Office 97 was a piece of junk, and 2000 didn't offer much more. 2002 was where they started getting things right, and 2003 had some nice features. I've personally been using the 2007 beta where there's some nifty stuff that I could see some business use for (though they're pushing Sharepoint like a crack dealer).
So, IMO, if you don't have documents that are very heavily formatted (which judging by the fact that you're still using 97, I don't think so), and money is an issue, move yourself out of MS 97 and go with OO.O 2.
Prove it.
Works for Gentoo... but I suppose the version number is added after it's released...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
They discovered Open Office could still read the new file format. Decided to tweak it that little bit further.
Deleted
Don't worry, Battlefield 2042 will be out on time, so all hope is not lost for year names.
Since when has MS released year-named products before that year?
Windows 98 release date - June 25, 1998
Windows 2000 release date - Feb 17, 2000
Office 2003 release date - Oct. 21, 2003
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.
I mean, really! 99% of the users wouldn't use anything that isn't in Office 2000. The only reason would be for file formats (more MS proprietary, as well and XML and OD), but still 99% of the users still wouldn't ever NEED to use them. I think a new Office version is a dead horse. Somebody shoot Steve B. and Bill G.!
It's a Mac thing. Parallels is virtualization software for running Windows natively at full speed in a window on a new Intel Mac. Entourage is Microsoft's Mac email client, bundled with Mac Office. Rosetta is the compatibility layer that allows new Intel Macs to run OS X PPC apps transparently but with a slight a speed hit.
I don't know if I can wait that long! My spreadsheets and word documents just aren't living up to their full potentiall!
/sarcasm
I will forever be a student.
The parent poster would probably change his mind if he were to watch any of the presentations made by Jensen Harris, the man in charge of the new Office UI.
I am a Windows 2000/Office 97 user who does not upgrade just because Microsoft decides they need to make a few extra billions with a bump in version number and some new eye candy. I assumed (without any evidence) that the new Office would be more of the same. But then I found Jensen Harris' presentation at BayCHI last December to be so interesting that now I am excited about trying the new Office UI.
Essentially, the new UI gets rid of the menu bars, button bars, side panels, clippy agents, personal menus and other cruft that slowly accumulated over the successive revisions of Microsoft Office. His argument is that a complex product needs a clear interface. And that's what the ribbon is: Everything is there, and its choices are always context sensitive.
My own personal opinion is that the new interface is pure brilliance, and it won't be long before other companies start poorly(*) imitating its task-based approach over the traditional feature-based approach.
Download the BayCHI slides and video. If you develop software, the new UI is definitely something to behold.
===
(*) The imitations will be done poorly because most other software firms do not have the huge sample of user reports automatically created in the current version of Office. The Office UI team was able to determine the frequency of commands so that even their arrangement on the ribbon will be from most-used to least.
If you don't have anything original to say, then don't say anything at all.
I was quite impressed with the Office 2007 beta and was surpised to learn that performance was an issue. One of the features I really like is the ability to do real-time previews of different style sets, which performed quickly. The UI is also quite streamlined and its obvious Microsoft is trying something new with UI design that no other OS can attest to.
I just am amazed that when there is an article that talks about how slow Microsoft's product development is taking, people complain about how long it is taking. But when Microsoft was turning out Office and OS updates with only a year or two between them, people were complaining about how fast an unecesary it was for MS to come out with something new so quickly.
The bottom line is, people don't got anything new, or original to say about Microsoft, and it gets pretty tired. I don't know if people think they are being witty or smart when they post another "insert common misperception here" comment.
The saddest part is, how may people are using MS products every day. I mean 90% of the desktop market uses Windows, so you kind of have to wonder if Slashdot is only read and commented on by 10% of the computer market.
I second the praise for Word 5 for Mac. Fast, straightforward UI. 6 was just awful and slow.
I've heard of hitting a fly with a hammer, but this is the first time I can recall hearing of hitting a nail with a flyswatter.
Seriously, if you need spreadsheets that big, you don't need spreadsheets--you need a database.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Can I work for you? I promise never to disagree with you or tell you something you don't want to hear. I just want you to send me to japan where I can drink and sing karaoke all night and get paid for it.
evil is as evil does
The ribbon does allow for more screen real estate. It's really no thicker than office was before, having one menu and two toolbars. Plus, it'll never get thicker than that (with extra toolbars).
The best part, though? A quick double click to any of the ribbon headers hides the whole thing. That turns it very minimalistic.
I have been using the beta and after even a short time I am not surprised by the delay. Lots of places where performance needs work with Outlook being the biggest.
The focus of this release seemed to be on eye candy (the ribbon) and not on performance and ease of use. Some will say that the ribbon adds to ease of use and maybe it does. But I also find it can be cumbersome some times. If you are an occassional user of an app, it might help you use the apps and discover commands. There was a lot in these apps that epople didn't use because they couldn't find the command or figure out how to use the commands. Maybe the ribbon helps, hard to tell yet.
Using Outlook 2007 is tough because the perfoamnce is terrible. That is saying a lot given the Outlook has always been slow. I know this is a beta, but one expects a beta 2, released just 3-4 months before the expected commercial release to be pretty close to final. There are some nice changes, but too little improvement and lacking needed extra functionality.
Word seems OK, but on the ribbon there is space left over and they make you click the "editting" icon to get to find or replace, which are common operations. Strange choice especially since they give Find a spot on the bar in Powerpoint.
Desktop Search 3, which is supposed to be an integrated element is incomplete and still buggy (yes, beta, but....).
Powerpoint and Excel seem about the same.
Lots of work in integrating with Sharepoint.
That MS realizes there isn't any new "killer app" value in the office suite? Due to that they have no pressing need to rush a new version out the door until it's what they want, and until it meets some level of quality they're shooting for. When "We're putting in ribbons!" is the huge leap forward.. you're not leaping very far.
If that's the case maybe this is a good thing in that they're trying to take their time. We all know it's not financially driven because shareholders want to see big profits before the end of this year to pick up the sagging stock price. As it is they're positioning for 2007 to be a huge year (new windows and new office in same year), which would make current shareholders somewhat unhappy. Because NOBODY buys a stock with the long term in view anymore... do they?
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore