http://www.osnews.com/story/16401/Microsoft_Wraps_up_Work_on_New_Office Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:07:01 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?179314 http://osnews.com/thread?179314 Just a slight correction to the end of the snippet: "Gone Gold," refers to the completion of the process of creating the "Gold Master," disc image for the DVDs or CDs being created at the factory, not the process of finalizing code. I suppose it works but it's just slightly inaccurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_gold

If you don't care, just ignore my little niggles Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DittoBox) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179319 http://osnews.com/thread?179319 Microsoft's Beta != Beta
Microsoft's RC != RC
Microsoft's Gold != Gold

Nothing out of the ordinary here.
I must add that Office 2007 is a fantastic innovative product from Microsoft. If they can deliver something new, why is it so hard with Windows. (What more, the MacBU are a handful of people and deliver Office:Mac with a fraction of the resources) Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179321 http://osnews.com/thread?179321 (What more, the MacBU are a handful of people and deliver Office:Mac with a fraction of the resources)

Perhaps it's because the bulk of the work is done by the Office division, and the Mac BU is there to port most of it to OS X, while adding some small changes to the UI here and there? Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evangs) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179323 http://osnews.com/thread?179323 So I understand the Mac version will come some 6 months after the Windows version? Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Buck) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179324 http://osnews.com/thread?179324 It's kind of said that they decide to drop VBA support during the Intel transition. From what I gather from MS blogs, Office:Mac's VBA is already lagging behind the Windows version. I guess it also doesn't make sense to rewrite features that are about to be deprecated.

I hope they will make VSTA available for Office:Mac 2007. At least we will have a proper replacement technology.Edited 2006-11-06 19:56 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (someone) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179329 http://osnews.com/thread?179329 That is what i like Bill Gates everytime he puts out new
software it will for what the computer industry will be in five years. Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (happycamper) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179331 http://osnews.com/thread?179331 Well, there are definitely more than some small changes.

For example, Internet Explorer for Mac was all-time more powerful than it's Windows counterpart. It did better rendering, it supported transparent PNG images, etc.

Also, the products are a lot more polished like their counterparts. I always found it funny how the guys and gals in the Mac BU could do it all right, what elsewhere at Microsoft everybody seemed to do wrong. Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ford Prefect) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179335 http://osnews.com/thread?179335 yeah. I run IE on my old os8.1 powermac and it is splendid. if the windows version had been the same featureDBrowser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160x160 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (helf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179339 http://osnews.com/thread?179339 ok.. no idea why it cut my post off... anyways, I meant if it had the same features on windows. it would have been a lot more popular. the mac version is a good browser.Browser: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 95; PalmSource; Blazer 3.0) 16;160x160 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (helf) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179350 http://osnews.com/thread?179350 Are you sure that their software isn't modeled after what the computer industry was five years ago? Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (brewmastre) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179352 http://osnews.com/thread?179352 The sad part is, is that once MS piles on a bunch of Service packs/hotfixes/security patches it will no longer be of Gold quality. Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (brewmastre) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179359 http://osnews.com/thread?179359 yep i wonder how many days will pass until we find windows vista and office 2007 in p2p networks and properly cracked
that's the only news i am waiting

bye Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mebarg) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179371 http://osnews.com/thread?179371 Yes because SP2 made Windows XP sooo much less secure...

Give me a break. Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DittoBox) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179386 http://osnews.com/thread?179386 it's odd and I realize this is subjective, so many folk keep saying how the mac office version is much better than the windows version, but I don't see that. I have both, and to me the mac version with all those floating windows and menu bars (not to mention the default zoom/page display being set to being way too small to be comfortable) just seems weird and less useable. can't get used to the thing. plus, I actually miss the cat office assistant. with the mac all you get is max, he's just not as cute ;-) Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179400 http://osnews.com/thread?179400 so many folk keep saying how the mac office version is much better than the windows version, but I don't see that

I've never seen it either. Probably because it is not true.

There was an experiment done once, they showed a group of people a movie for free, then they showed the same movie to a different group for $1 each--those that paid the money rated the movie consistently better than those who saw it for free. The more you have invested in something, the higher you are likely to rate it. So even though Mac Office is a hasty port of the original, it gets higher ratings due to the user investment. Just a guess.... Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jtrapp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179428 http://osnews.com/thread?179428 not to start a flamewar, but I think your theory can be extended to the platform itself... Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (macisaac) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179449 http://osnews.com/thread?179449 I think they're on different code bases. At least I think I may have read that somewhere.

The point is that, if I recall correctly, the OS X version is not just a port with small changes to the UI. Tue, 07 Nov 2006 01:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Volt) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179469 http://osnews.com/thread?179469 Here is a list of them (May not be complete):

- Project Centre & Palette
- Scrapbook: Souped-up clipboard
- Compatibility Report
- Notebook Layout view for Word: Supports audio recording and automatically places bookmarks in the recording
- Page Layout view for Excel: Coming to Excel 2007 for Windows
- 3D Transitions and OpenGL rendering: Rotating cubes, anyone?
- Formatting Palette: Context sensitive palette that consolidates various floating toolbars and dialogue options into one place
- Applescript support: only make sense on MacsEdited 2006-11-07 04:39 Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (someone) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179492 http://osnews.com/thread?179492 Fortunately, you are right about hardware requirements, but unfortunately, you are also right about DRM. I'm sure the rest of the industry will be forced to follow, but for right now, Microsoft can hogtie your computer today. Tue, 07 Nov 2006 08:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Clinton) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179535 http://osnews.com/thread?179535 I didn't say anything about it being less secure, I am referring to how bloated XP becomes once you load all the patches on it. I don't remember the exact numbers but they speak for themselves: XP System dir Prepatch = 950M; XP System dir now w/ all patches installed = 2.4G. You can't seriously tell me that Windows doesn't get more and more bloated and slow with every patch MS throws at it.
I think a good quote that says it all is: "You can think of Windows XP as a house with a second floor built of spackle, wood filler and duct tape." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2... Edited 2006-11-07 13:09 Tue, 07 Nov 2006 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (brewmastre) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179586 http://osnews.com/thread?179586 A very handy feature I use in Office:Mac Powerpoint is converting PPT to movie. Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tpaws) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?179626 http://osnews.com/thread?179626 And if you knew what you were talking about...

Every time you install a patch is backs up the old files. In the cases of SP1 and then SP2 it essentially makes a backup of the entire Windows directory. Any file that SPn replaces is backed up and compressed in the process.

My one year old, 4.2 gig Windows directory has 2.6 gig of it residing in the "$NtUninstallx," "$NtServicePackUninstall," "ServicePackFiles," and "Installer" directories. Another 200 megabytes is used by the dllcache directory which contains current backups in case of malware trying to replace system files. Various driver files take up another 200-300 meg.

Most of the what's in my Windows directory isn't bloat, it's backups and drivers. A lowly amount of 1.4 gigabytes is all that windows uses on a day to day basis barring drivers. The average fresh Windows SP2 install is about 1.1 gig.

It doesn't get slower, and the software itself doesn't get bloated. It's gets slower because of registry bloat and software creep.Edited 2006-11-07 17:45 Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DittoBox) Comments