iTWire - It’s Official: Office 2007 goes gold, Vista next!

It’s Official: Office 2007 goes gold, Vista next!

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 08 November 2006
Page 1 of 2 Microsoft’s long awaited follow up to their most successful software besides Windows finally goes RTM. It’s only been three years since the last version, but oh so much is different – both within Office and the suddenly hyper competitive marketplace. Can Office survive the latest threats to its dominance? Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D At 9am on November 6, Microsoft finally released the gold RTM code for Office 2007, capping off three years of development. In that time, Microsoft has had to create enormous amounts of code for a range of other projects, from Windows Vista itself, through to the Windows Live online services, the Xbox 360, the Zune and much more. When Microsoft first showed us what Office 2007 would look like, many were impressed by the amazing scale of change that the new Office offered, radically redesigning the interface for the first time in more than a decade. Making such a big change was clearly a gamble, but if Microsoft needed further proof that changes were needed, a user survey said it all in the simplest manner possible. No doubt you already know the story, but if you don’t, the short version goes something like this: In surveys Microsoft conducted with its Office user base, it was shocked to discover that the top 10 features requested for the next version of Office, which is now Office 2007, were features that Microsoft had already incorporated into previous versions of the software. The features were already there... but people didn’t know how to find them or use them! This, amongst other findings and insights, would confirm to Microsoft that a major update of the way we use software was needed. Not something so completely radical as to be incredible pretty but unusable, but something that brought immediate benefits, had the smallest learning curve possible (indeed one that invited self discovery with the very pleasing result of actually being able to intuitively figure the new system out quite easily) and one that was instantly obvious to the eye as a major advance. Three years of work down that path has led us to Office 2007, the most advanced office application software on Earth. Light years ahead of competitors, it should be a tremendous success and whatever happens, will no doubt sell in the millions, if only by virtue of millions of corporate customers who will be buying new computers with Vista and Office 2007 pre-loaded through a volume licensing program. It will no doubt be a massive hit with consumers too... at least, those that can afford it and decide to buy it. For therein lies Office’s biggest flaw. Serious competitors now exist, and then even exist at the incredibly hard-to-resist price point of $Free. The fly in the ointment is that the competition effectively does the same job as previous versions of Office, and even this new version, for most people’s uses. Read on to the next page... << First page < 1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>