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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.'"
Subscription model: HELL, No.
New look and feel means that the IT department has to give each user training on the new interface. Usually just because a couple of the managers refuse to spend a few minutes to "play" with it and learn it themselves.
It's funny that everytime I am asked to do Office training, 50% of the students are more skilled at Excel (acct. especially) and Outlook (admin asst. especially) than I am. So I am standing in front of a room baffeling the people that have no idea what a pivot table is, and looking like an idiot trying to explain it to the people that know it better than me.
although those are thankfully optional and not mandatory
One without the other would have been a disaster.
I'm still using Office 2003 at work, and will for the forseeable future. Microsoft still provides a compatibility pack to read and write docx. What reason is there to upgrade?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Easy integration with Skydrive sounds really cool until you think about this inside any organization which doesn't want its files stored on a public cloud. Can this be disabled across an enterprise install easily? Can it be switched to an organization's private cloud?
Here come all the FSF FOSS shills to derail MS.
Not just FOSS "shills". Anyone with a lick of common sense will try to find their way out from under the thumb of an extortionist.
No thank you.
Call me crazy, but I kind-of like having a word processor that does grammatical checking, automatic table of contents, dynamically-created diagrams, templates for cover pages, and theme-based formatting when I paste in content from other sources.
I actually like it that Word can talk to Access and Excel for merge operations, and even output to Outlook when I want to send out emails. And yes, I like that as a programmer I can use VBA to further extend the apps whenever I need to with a little bit of code hunting.
Here's your typewriter. I'll take Office 2013.
You could start by not using an ActiveX object. Also, how is being able to embed executable code into a document a good thing?
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Still using Office 2000. I still don't see any reason to upgrade. It's Office, not heart surgery.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The only thing they need to do to improve office at this point is purge the blasphemy of the ribbon UI abomination and restore good pure drop down menu's to their righteous glory.
How is there a new UI? It shares the same ribbon with Office 2007 and 2010. It's more like a skin on 2010 than anything else.
Will this be the first office to have a good formatting engine in place. Features such as auto numbering, auto bullets and the rest, are they all going to work? I say this after fighting with office 2007 and 2010 today as the auto numbering system completely corrupted my document. Office doesn't need any more cosmetic updates, it doesn't need any more ribbons, any more hidden menus or any more flash. What office needs is to be redesigned at its core, features like its formatting system need to redesigned to work. Features like it's grammar and spell check engine need to be worked on, if Microsoft tries hard they might be able to release a document system as good or better then Libre Office, but I doubt it!
The features he does mention ARE useful. If you know how to use your tools better than the next guy who continually questions what benefit the extra functionality and bloat provides in said tools, you're at an advantage.
I don't consider his post to be shilling - I consider it to be an info-dump of features he considers useful. The edge in his post suggests a frustration from being told continually by people here and other open-source fanatics that such features are bloat, and that somehow open-source software can work with the same level of functionality and integration (which it often can't for someone who's aware of the niceties and uses them in something like Outlook).
It's also amazing how many people, who've never worked in I.T. for a mid to large organization, and particularly a lot of young people (students), who think they know better about what a company needs than what people experienced in how the world works in the corporate environment know.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
The "look" of an application is as relevant as what Ballmer had for breakfast. I do not care for it. What I want to see is good code behind the "look". Whoever cares about the look is likely to wear Armani suits and Gucci shoes (Or dreams about being able to afford them). I need good code that does not crash and keeps my data mine and not M$.
Gee, what if apps were skinnable and people could make them look like whatever they want?
This is hell at work. Change of shifts. Temps and volunteers. You need to have people who can sit down at any desk at any time and be productive,
At my last job, I did some tech support in addition to my "real" job. I had to help users with QuickBooks regularly, and we had 3 people sharing 2 jobs.
The simple ribbon bar across the top of the window in QuickBooks became a living hell as the three gals switched computers. "My QuickBooks isn't working", "I can't search [because the button is gone]" were just part of the endless nightmare. Only one of the three could handle a different interface (and it really wasn't that different). I cannot imagine the chaos that skins on top of Office would have created.
this reverse snobbism is annoying. what's wrong with something that works and looks good? this is why most "normal" people think people like you are weird.