Office 2007 Delayed Again 211
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."
Time to upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
pass the shovel (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cue the obligatory joke: (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe they should just call it "Office V10", fewer crashes, with twice the big brother. Look here [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org] if you're unsure what I mean.
I tried it... (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.
Re:I tried it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Be Patient (Score:2, Insightful)
You do?
Well, you shouldn't
Re:cue the obligatory joke: (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Be Patient (Score:4, Insightful)
They've shown they can justify a delay because the product is GOOD.
Microsoft has not given me the level of confidence Valve has.
Licensing 6.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:What's in it that would make me want to buy it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Geeze (Score:2, Insightful)
What microsoft needs to do is FIX the problems that everyone complains about, and THEN they will become pointless to say
Example: Politicians are corrupt. Millions of people every day claim politicians are corrupt, and yet, in many cases, it's true, so the complaint is bloody well valid!
As for the 90%/10% jab, you realize this is
I wouldn't be suprised if the windows/non-windows percentages were more like 60/40 or 50/50.
Re:Listen to Jensen Harris Before Deciding (Score:3, Insightful)
Case-in-point:
O2K (Word) I don't know how to reproduce this - but sometimes when I rt.click on a number-list, and look for "bullets and numbering" in the so-called context menu, it's not there. Or sometimes it's there, and it's greyed out. So then I go up to the menu bar and select Format->Bullets and Numbering - to modify the number-list properties. The context menu apparently thought it was being clever.
Those supposed context-sensitive "ribbons" in O2k7 better not fuck with me. I'll go to Open Office. I swear. And I'll take my customers with me.
Could the reason be... (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:I tried it... (Score:2, Insightful)