Submitted by Microsoft has released Office 2007 on it’s Microsoft Volume License Services website. Confirmed versions available for download are the Office 2007 Enterprise at 559MB and Office 2007 Groove at 189MB. MSDN subscribers can expect to get it on November 12th. Office 2007 went gold on November 6th 2006.
I hope I’m not the only one that saw “Office 2007 Groove” and thought: WTF?
I found this when trying to get more info:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/default.aspx
Now, who was the “Marketing Genius” that came up with that crap?
Update: Apparently this:
“Groove 2007 is a collaboration software program that brings teams together to work on project activities and share information — anywhere, anytime, with anyone.”
Edited 2006-11-10 23:27
If I recall correctly, Groove is a WebDAV based collaboration tool. I’ve had several betas and never actually tried Groove before. But I’ve heard good things.
Groove is not new – it was written by a smaller company that Microsoft purchased. Groove 2007 is NOT the first release, even by Microsoft.
…it was written by a smaller company that Microsoft purchased.
That got my thinking, exactly how many of MS products and ‘technologies’ did they just purchase?
89.678%.
The rest they boosted from, Apple, Novell (long time ago!) and “Linux.”
(yes, I’m being facetious)
A bunch. Actually, the only large product they wrote from the ground up (well, one that’s commonly known at least) is Exchange Server. Ironically that’s the only MS product that dominates its particular area as well (something like 80+ percent install-base).
Office could qualify, except it was written for Mac first then ported to Windows later on.
It’s all about economics though…it was cheaper for them to purchase an existing codebase and then modify/add to it over time.
Windows NT could qualify as a ‘written from the ground up’ – take out the stupid compromises they did in the name of ‘compatibility’, Windows NT on paper and the early days, had it stuck to the original path, would have turned out to be one heck of a good product.
They’re more or less finally getting back to the original ‘roots’ of NT with Windows Vista; locking down the kernel, seperating services and users etc.
Joel on software had a damn good article I think around a year ago talking about why it makes absolutely no sense what so ever going off and ‘starting from scratch’ – he gave some good examples of companies who paid that price of stupidity; Borland completely re-writing their code base for Paradox in C++ with no real benefits when completed; or Wordperfect who spent several years fine tuning their product to be lean and efficent, only to find that their whole investment was a complete waste of money given that the average memory in the computer had increased and the move to Windows from MSDOS.
Microsoft releases Windows and Microsoft Office; and there are idiots over at Wordperfect hand coding memory allocation routines to squeeze an extra 67k of efficiency out of the code.
That got my thinking, exactly how many of MS products and ‘technologies’ did they just purchase?
Just from the top of my head :
DOS – QDOS
Microsoft Dynamics Nav – Navision Attain
MS Sql Server – Sybase Sql Server
MS Visio – Visio corp. Visio
DirectX – RenderMorphics
MS Hotmail – Hotmail
Virtual PC – Connectix Virtual PC
Visual FoxPro – Fox Technologies Foxbase
Recent MS games – Bungie
I’m sure there’s more, like the Vista anti-spyware, etc. MS have a history of purchasing companies if they even think they might possibly in the furthest of futures pose some sort of competetive threat.
But then seeing the quality of some MS stuff, maybe they should have made more acquisitions.
Autoroute Express was bought too
ray ozzie made groove
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ozzie
cheers!
I actually trited them a while back, when they weren’t MS. I think I actually may have liked it somewhat. Wonder what MS turned it to be, guess just changing the logos and the branding.
I hope I’m not the only one that saw “Office 2007 Groove” and thought: WTF?
No, you’re not. But, then again if you think a bit more. How can you readvertise hot water or sliced bread?
While I was expecting some real collaboration tools, I was quite disappointed to see webdav with fancy gui.
How should collaboration be done. Gobby is a perfect example, or AbiWord.
AbiWord collaboration (or how it should be done)
in action
http://uwog.net/news/?p=29
and tools
http://85.113.253.43/~uwog/abiword/cac-experiment.gif
btw. there was also screencast of editing with multiple cursors (one per connected user) but I can’t find it.
After seeing what Abiword did, MS version is disappointing.
You’d want Microsoft Office Live Meeting instead of Groove:
http://www.microsoft.com/uc/livemeeting/default.mspx
Microsoft’s NetMeeting has also offered much of the same functionality since the 1990s.
Since Microsoft seems to be getting friendly with non-Microsoft software do you think we will see Office:mac 2007 get the ability to get in the groove? Will Entourage work with Exchange Server as well as Outlook?
Be very surprising. They can do Office to some extent and both make a bit of money and keep competition law at bay. But actually make the Mac version of Office a viable competitor in the corporte environment? No way is the risk/reward ratio favorable on that one.
If Office is ever ported to Linux, which is maybe not too unlikely at some point, you can be sure it will not take Exchange along with it.
I wouldn’t be too sure about that…
I went back to an office I used to work in yesterday and they’ve upgraded Exchange – they have some nice new tricks in it.
They are 100% MS – It will be the really silly things like the popup notice of a new email with the first few words of the body text when using it with Outlook that will make them stay with it. I’m sure some silly manager will decide it is better to keep it and have that “increased productivity” rather than move over to something more reliable and secure.
Until Exchange replacements can meet every single feature of Exchange (including those silly tricks) AND provide additional features (plugin to decent groupware) AND be more secure and reliable – inertia will keep MS in place.
BTW – one of the “new tricks” I saw was an Alcatel phonebook for their new IP-telephony system which plugs in to Exchange – that is really less of a trick and more of useful plugin that will be impossible to migrate to Linux I would have thought (until Alcatel ports it)
MS has realised that there are three things which are going to save them from Linux:
1) Software not running on anything but MS or OSX – such as Adobe, MS Office etc. – this is nothing new
2) Plugins – making sure that crucial pieces of enterprise software are dependent on MS software (like Exchange) – this is a newer development and potentially the most disruptive
3) Multimedia – with business sown up with point 2, MS needs to keep consumers reliant on Windows by touting new features such as integrated Media Centre and Games which are constrained to windows for a number of factors (commercial chicken before the egg with Linux, and corporate agreements and royalties)
Although alternatives (whether open or closed source) are technically better in and of themselves, they are naturally constrained by the lack of integration with other “essential” software. As such, I think having people like Oracle getting involved with Linux is a good thing – the GPL stops them from being able to cause too much damage if their intent is not honourable.
…be posted on an anti-virus site first?
Yanno…just in case???
Seriously, why is it so blasted HUGE? Does the animated paperclip really take that much coding just to wink at you?
Openoffice.org isn’t exactly a small program, and MS Office includes more (Publisher, Infopath, Outlook, Project, etc etc etc). Should we be running Openoffice.org through a virus scanner too? Does it really require 200MB to have a flashing light bulb bug you every 2 seconds?
It’s too big, yes. But an office suite will be big – especially if the OS it self isn’t utilized as much as it should be (lack of system wide plugins etc.).
Blame it on Wirth’s Law:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth‘s_law
Based on what evidence? the size of the core office suite is still the same; yes, Microsoft Office has increasd in size, but that is due to more applications being added to the ‘default bundle’.
As for ‘lack of system wide plugins’; bull, ActiveX provides that very service, and companies provide features via that technology in many applications; heck, Adobe use that so that people can ‘one click’ their documents to pdf without needing to save, open, convert etc using another tool.
Btw, the Opensource world is no better, given the bloated bearge of an Office suite that is OpenOffice.org – about the only one that *really* integrates well into the operating system/desktop environment is KOffice; which quite frankly, should be the one being developed rather than trying to change the frankenstein suite that is OpenOffice.org into something that is moderately usable.
Edited 2006-11-11 02:46
About the open source world not being better. Correct, and I haven’t claimed it was better. Why do you want to make this into a war between closed source and open source, when Wirth’s Law applies equally to both camps?
ActiveX isn’t really a system-wide plugin framework. True, the plugins _can_ be used by all applications, but one image parsing ActiveX plugin can easily have a completely different interface than another image parsing ActiveX plugin. This is opposite true system wide plugins where the interface is the same no matter the plugin and the nature of the plugin.
Whether MS Office has the same size or has grown is irrelevant. I merely stated that Office Suites (no matter the license of the suites) tend to be very big – due to their nature. And they tend to get larger for every generation (see Wirth’s Law).
And again: Why do you attack me for things I haven’t written? And why do you want to turn this into a closed source vs. an open source war? I didn’t mention Open Source nor closed source at all.
Most “commercial quality” software (be it closed source or open source) today is around 75-90% larger than they should be, considering the functionality and the development paradigms in use.
Edited 2006-11-11 03:09
Btw, the Opensource world is no better, given the bloated bearge of an Office suite that is OpenOffice.org – about the only one that *really* integrates well into the operating system/desktop environment is KOffice; which quite frankly, should be the one being developed rather than trying to change the frankenstein suite that is OpenOffice.org into something that is moderately usable.
Off-topic — did you know KOffice doesn’t integrate well in Gnome? XFCE? or anything else than KDE? Does KOffice run under Windows too? OpenOffice doesn’t integrate so well into KDE because it needs to work well in other DEs too. Besides, even if you like KOffice, not everyone does. I for example hate using any KDE apps under Gnome, and as such I wouldn’t touch KOffice even with a long stick.
Well, kexi is getting better all the time and is looking a lot better than Base now, and there is no real Gnome solution. Maybe its not as good as Knoda, but getting there. Which is also a KDE app. Tellico is a kde app that’s better at what it does than any Gnome equivalent.
I use Gnome all the time, and KDE apps all the time with it, and really, they seem to work just fine. Don’t quite know what this integration is that is missing. Its true I leave the colors etc the way they come. Maybe if you change fonts in the Gnome controls they don’t work perfectly on the KDE apps? Who cares as long as they run?
in fact, koffice does run on windows, under cygwin.
and with koffice 2, it will run natively under winblows, just as it will on osx.
and the reason kde or any kde apps doesent integrate well with gnome? well.. why should it? kde is an excellent platform, clean and well written, while gnome is a huge load of monolithic ubermemleaking crap. and even if they decided to integrate into it (which would add a whopping 100mb of crappy gnome libs), the features required would most certainly be removed in one of the later gnome releases.
and the reason kde or any kde apps doesent integrate well with gnome? well.. why should it? kde is an excellent platform, clean and well written, while gnome is a huge load of monolithic ubermemleaking crap. and even if they decided to integrate into it (which would add a whopping 100mb of crappy gnome libs), the features required would most certainly be removed in one of the later gnome releases.
It ain’t me who was complaining about integration, the parent did. But, how is Gnome monolithic or crappy when compared to KDE? If I install Gnome, I get loads of stuff on my harddrive, but really, the same applies to KDE. If it gtk+ you mean, well, doesn’t it also mean XFCE or anything running on gtk+ is crappy? I don’t recall anyone saying XFCE is crappy..
This is what you get if you go to the website…
“MVLS, SA Benefits Administration and MSDN Benefits Administration sites will be unavailable starting from Friday Nov 10th at 5:00 PM (PST) to Sunday, Nov 12th at 4:00 PM (PST) for scheduled upgrades. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause.
”
Probably because they are uploading Office 2007 and Vista and getting ready for all of the download traffic.
MS Office is far and away the best office suite around. Even though it’s a large program, its memory footprint is very small and it is blisteringly fast, even on the oldest of machines. Its feature set leaves little to be desired, and usually defines the direction that other copycat suites take. The overall refinement is superb. But…. It’s disgustingly, ridiculously expensive, and not exactly cross-platform. And so here I am, plunking away on the slow, buggy, antiquated hack that is OpenOffice. You get what you pay for, I guess.
Office has always been clunky.
Wordperfect has spoiled me I guess. But there’s something to be said for a file format that allows you to add features in later versions, yet still open the file in early versions. For instance, you can create a file in Wordperfect X3 with fancy tables, fonts, styles, and whatnot. And still be able to open it in Wordperfect 7. And when you throw in features like RevealCodes and MakeItFit, I honestly cannot understand how people can like using Office (except for Excel, which is pretty darn nice in Office XP, the first version that didn’t have artificial limits on filesize).
There’s nothing worse than having a 4+ page document in Word where you delete a single space and watch your entire document reformat itself. It’s a friggin’ space, why are there a tonne of formatting codes in there?
OpenOffice is nice, but until they (or any other word processor) add a RevealCodes features, there’ll be no other app for me.
MS Word is the worst possible example of a word processor out there.
>exactly how many of MS products and ‘technologies’ did they just purchase?
At lot! Thousands. That’s because they have lots of cash and sometimes it only makes sense to spend it. But so what? That makes them no different than everyone else. Most companies with money do this. No wait, *every* company with cash on hand does this because it’s smart.
A sample of two of the most innovative companies who would probably never, ever, god forbid, “just purchase” something because another company poses some sort of threat or they need to catch up in a specific area. After all they are so danged innovative and MS is just a re_badger!
Apple:
NeXT Inc (ahem)
SoundJam > iTunes
Key Grip > Final Cut Pro
Emagic > Logic Pro
Nothing Real (Tremor and Shake)
Spruce Technologies (DVD authoring)
Astarte (DVD authoring)
Silicon Color (for FCP)
Cover Flow
Prismo
Silicon Grail (video effects)
Zayante
Google:
Writely
Okrut
Keyhole > Google Earth
YouTube
JotSpot
Picasa
Neven Vision
Pyra Labs > Blogger.com
Neotonic Software
Applied Semantics (Adsense competitor)
Kaltix (Adsense competitor)
Sprinks
Ignite Logic
Urchin
Dodgeball
Measure Map (from adaptive path)
GTalkr
SketchUp
This doesn’t begin to cover it for Apple and of course the MS list would be much longer but the point is – everybody who has the means tries to buy or bury the competition.
This doesn’t begin to cover it for Apple and of course the MS list would be much longer but the point is – everybody who has the means tries to buy or bury the competition.
Or they see the potential in something, and instead of starting from scratch with a competing product, purchases what exists already.
Bad cases are when a product is bought up for the purpose of cancelling the product completely.
And what is new in this word processor:
– A nice musical video the first time you execute the programs.
– Clipo now have new faces and gestures.
– Popups, popup and more popups.
yes you can start downloading it
http://www.nforce.nl/index.php?switchto=nfos&menu=quicknav&item=vie…
search it in isohunt.com
bye