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First Look: Microsoft Office 2013
snydeq writes "Ever since the first beta editions of Windows 8 appeared, rumors have circulated over how Microsoft would revamp its other flagship consumer product, Office, to be all the more useful in the new OS. Would Office become touch-oriented and Metro-centric, to the exclusion of plain old Windows users? A first look at Office 2013 provides the short answer: No. 'Office 2013 has clearly been revised to work that much better in Windows 8 and on touch-centric devices, but the vast majority of its functionality remains in place. The changes made are mostly cosmetic — a way to bring the Metro look to Office for users of versions of Windows other than 8. Further, Office 2013 has been designed to integrate more closely with online storage and services (mainly Microsoft's), although those are thankfully optional and not mandatory.'"
Arstechnica has a more comprehensive review.
Also they were kind enough to divide the new features by individual product. Word is here, so is excel, outlook, as well as powerpoint.
I just briefly went through them but the general improvements is that you can share documents with your coworkers with its cloud add ons as well as import and export your work documents with integrated skydrive from your work/home pcs. For individual programs, Excel has a new intellisense that works in cells so you can select commonly used names and formulas with a transparent window that wont obstruct your data. MS calls this ghosting. Outlook has Bing and map integration for directions and travel data as well as having a multiview pane so you do not have to close the calendar to view your todo list for example. Word, well I didn't see anything worthwhile except for some extra formatting options for brochures and other material and a souped up track it list where you can even do text messages in them for things like "Bob redo these figures - boss". Does this mean they are axing MS Publisher? They seem to be covering the same functionality. There is some other stuff that I will read later because it is detailed.
What is clear is this is surprisingly strongly aimed at corporations. MS is getting back to its strength as a groupware product that ties to corporate infrastructure.
The ones who still are holding on to IE 6/8, XP, and Office 2k3. College students or home users will not see that much improvement. Also Neowin mentioned MS is killing both Vista and XP support with Office 2013. This office suite is aimed to get those corporations dragging their feet with Windows 7.
http://saveie6.com/
No, because I work in an organisation with 1000 people around the world, and my Microsoft email client tells me who is sitting at their desk right now, has one click-desktop sharing, conferencing, file sharing, tasks, goals, sales tasks, decisions, votes, and still works when i have little or no internet. It is a cockpit for daily work and efficiency. (and I can program a plugin to do anything else that I find that I need) . When my laptop gets toasted, I have zero data loss and I get it all back as it was with 1-click, and while windows is being reinstalled I still have access to almost everything over any browser/smartphone. Did I mention that all my Russian, Greek, Arabic and Chinese mails all render properly? My word processor and my email client use the same richtext/html editor. Sure I can install 15 pieces of software to do that, but not throughout the entire organisation. MS-Office is installed & enterprise-licensed in 1 click, and with another click synchronized from the server.
Because MS is almost totally balkanised. The OS group had a come to Jesus moment (facilitated by some visits from Their Owners) and came up with Metro / Win8 etc. The rest of the company is thinking "WTF?" So when it came time for the new Office, rather than implement The New Wave of MS OS garbage, they're sticking to the product plans that have been in place since the Clinton Administration. "Steady as she goes - the Office division will weather this storm... The OS team will get its telephony ass kicked by Apple. Apple's going to stop making serious computers, anyway, go back to developing for serious computers, and churn out the same old shite we've been peddling since the President of Sierra Leone, Valentine Strasser, was deposed by the chief of defence, Julius Bio. Then, we'll be back to the same old same old and own the world for another day."
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