Fresh on the heels of a delay in broad availability of Windows Vista, Microsoft confirmed late Thursday that it is also pushing the mainstream launch of Office 2007 to next year. As with Vista, Microsoft hopes to finish the code for Office 2007 this year. The company said work will be completed by October, when it will make Office 2007 available to business customers that have signed up for Microsoft’s volume-licensing program. And, again like Vista, Microsoft plans to ship retail and original equipment manufacturer versions of the product in January. UPDATE: Microsoft has joined a committee that has a key role in the ratification of the OpenDocument format as an international standard.
but if in 2007, then MS Office 2008
generalizing the above
MS Office current_year + 1
When their own people say:
“Even more damning is the comment ‘Vista – I wouldn’t buy it with someone else’s money. Then again what do I know, I’ve only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs’.”
Oh well some one will waste their time buying this crap or even more time trying to hack the security so they can steal it. LOL! Crazy!
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/85527/microsoft-employees-call-for-ball…
I’m always wary of trusting anonymous sources. The author may or may not work for MS, and there is no way of telling, as far as I can see, unless PCPro themselves could validate the authenticity of the poster.
I imagine that MS are suffering from the symtoms that all large, mature corporations suffer from: too many layers of bureaucracy, too many internal vested interests leading to politics rather than innovation and progress. Who truly knows?
However, I think also that the Office decision is right: if Vista is going to undergo some code changes, it would be best if Office 2007 were fully compliant with these. The worst thing for MS would be to have a large Office 2007 user base running business-critical databases/spreadsheets, only to break these when Vista ships. That would do more harm than a delay now.
On a side note: does anyone know if Excel 2007 will ship with client-server functionality? I remember reading about this once and would love to know how they manage locking and issues such as cell-referencing being affected by, e.g. formulae changes/deletions.
You might be wary of anonymous sources, but did you read the 326 comments on that blog? That’s a lot of supposed forgeries.
A while back there was discussion on Slashdot regarding salaries at Microsoft. Unless they were also bogus, a number of former employees posted. The consensus was that Microsoft is a complete mess internally, bogged down by politics and red tape. The blog postings didn’t surprise me in the least.
Ronald Vos:
“You might be wary of anonymous sources, but did you read the 326 comments on that blog? That’s a lot of supposed forgeries.”
I confess that I did not. 326?!
It’s not that I don’t believe that the individual is who they say they are, or that I don’t agree with what they are saying. It’s just that there are so many rumours, so much zealotry and so much misinformation floating about the Web (about pretty much any topic), that I have become less and less willing to trust anonymous posts without some sort of corroboration.
Of course, it’s often only via anonymous posts that employees can safely expose their employers’ problems and we get to see beyond the press releases.
Thanks for the response. I’ve modded you up for pointing out the comments and the /. reference.
[Edit: Corrected typo]
Edited 2006-03-27 20:59
I’m always wary of trusting anonymous sources. The author may or may not work for MS, and there is no way of telling, as far as I can see, unless PCPro themselves could validate the authenticity of the poster.
Well, the thing is, I don’t believe it one little bit – quite frankly, its easy to have people portraying that they work for Microsoft – stir up a little excriment, and see the fun explode.
Yes, Microsoft is probably in a spot of trouble – they’ve bitten off more than can chew, and have realised it; they’re now stuck in a really difficult spot, do they cut back the features and disappoint the public or do they keep the features in and risk another Windows XP RTM saga of security issues plaguing the product. Sure, security issues are a fact of life, but it shouldn’t happen to the same degree as it did with Windows XP, pre-SP2.
I’m sure with Windows Vista and Office, they’re fine products; but at the same time I think they need to make the biggest gamble of their life – drop all backwards compatibility for products that existed before Windows XP – in other words, if it isn’t a native Windows XP application, Microsoft won’t promise that it’ll work nicely.
From what it seems, their problems lie with trying to provide backwards compatibility after radically altering their operating system so much. There is only so much backwards compatibility you can provide before you simply just say, “bugger it, its time to move on!”.
The transition from the old threading model in Linux to NPTL was a little rough and caused some applications to stop working, but at the same time, the benefits of the new threading model far out weighed the down side; the same thing needs to be decided upon with Windows XP.
Anyone with a basic understanding of the system development lifecycle will tell you, it gets to a point that a system becomes so untennable to maintain, that you’ve got to either drop the whole thing, or dump parts – Thats what Microsoft need to do, to get back on track; push it out another 6 months to the middle of next year, dump backwards compatibility for applications prior to Windows XP release, inform developers and ISVs, and start cracking the whip above the partners heads to ensure that applications are either updated or released which support Windows Vista without issues or hassles.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=280
From your link:
Closed-source software development has a scaling limit, a maximum complexity above which it collapses under its own weight.
That sounds good. I want to believe it. But no reason is given to cause me to believe it.
Yep, we’ll have to play the wait-n-see card on that one, indeed.
The MS hiearachy are to big to produce something.
They are trying to be good at so many things.
*THE SAME HERE APPLIES TO NEXT OFFICE SUITE*
I think they should release Vista and Office as a service pack for Windows XP(Office 2003) and start on writing a new code from scratch so it’s good from the beginning til the end.
And for me it seems logic that they would release this for free cause of those ship dates that seems to move forward the whole time.
Do those changes in the hierachy and move on from square 1.
What confidence do they think they put on their customers? Now they cannot trust; will Vista come in 2010? Or what? Well..
Edited 2006-03-27 17:55
As Office 2007 will be available to the business market this year, it’s quite clear that the consumer version’s delay is not due to problems with the code but rather a desire to launch the product at the same time as Vista.
Unlike Vista, the home/student versions of Vista will not have more features than the business versions.
ITA eMagius . The delay of Consumer versions of Office is just ‘lock stepping’ release to comsumer versions of Vista.
Plus if the rumoured problems in comsumer versions of vista ( re the Windows Media stuff ) are the actual cause of the delay it makes sense to do some more testing that they play well together 🙂
M# is a juggernaut that’s completely out of control. 60 billion dollars to spend on marketing won’t prevent it from sliding off the road, sooner or later.
Are people still having fun at work there? Maybe only the X-box geeks, until they got dragged to coding for Vista.
I always found it ironic that Steve McConnell’s books are being published by Microsoft Press. They should be required reading for Management at Redmond.
Obviously, Steve should no longer associate himself with MS. It’s like teaching Christianity at the Taliban HQ.
Steve should no longer associate himself with MS.
The problem is that Steve isn’t a tech-head with management abilities; he starts promising things which he knows little about – best advice to Steve, go back to Unilever and take back your old job of pawning off clothes powder.
Bill Gates was no better in that regard, he created an environment of competition, bicking and infighting between various factions of the organisation; Bill should stick with what he knows, dicking around with computers, and leave management tasks up to the people who know what they’re doing.
When you create an environment with management who rule by intimidation, your subordinants are too scared to speak up when something goes haywire like the issue now – I’ll bet my bottom dollar, there was a lonely grunter looking at the situation, and realised they were going to run into trouble, but rather than rocking the boat and risk his employment, he kept his mouth shut, head down, bum up, and work furiously at his task he has been set.
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What happens is that they want to release an Office suite with some “added value” so people pay for it…
They fell the breath of Open Office Org behind…
Now Open Office is worthy to make 90% of what you can do with Office, so it is more than sufficent for most users.
In 2008 Open Office will be even better, so Microsoft needs badly to offer something solid and innovate, with something really useful and new. If not they are doomed… More and more people will move to Open Office simply because is free and now is really a powerfull office suite for home users and enterprises…
By 2008 KOffice and Gnome Office will be better too…
So my Crystal Ball is predicting hard times for Ms Office for the next years to come…
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“Now Open Office is worthy to make 90% of what you can do with Office, so it is more than sufficent for most users”
Just because it will do most/all the things people need does not mean they are going to use it in place of MS Office.
“So my Crystal Ball is predicting hard times for Ms Office for the next years to come…”
There seems to be a bad batch of OSS happy crystal balls floating around eBay. I would check with ESR to see if he will accept a refund.
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“Just because it will do most/all the things people need does not mean they are going to use it in place of MS Office”
Whatever…
Well, not everybody is as generous and explendid as you are, and probalby will not pay to buy a copy of Ms Office, having something free that can do more or less the same.
So if you are wanting to pay for it, it’s OK, Bill will be happy to know that…
But I neeed the money much more that Bill needs it… So I will suggest you to send me the money you wolud pay for Ms Office 2008, and I will tell you all the files, extra files and applets to install with OOo so you can use perfectly, smoothly and in a rush your office suite…
Next time try to finish all the post before answering. I said also: “More and more people will move to Open Office simply because is free and now is really a powerfull office suite for home users and enterprises…”
— “There seems to be a bad batch of OSS happy crystal balls floating around eBay. I would check with ESR to see if he will accept a refund”
more Whatever…
ESR???
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Can you not accept that some people are happy with MS Office?
I’ve used OpenOffice many times over the years and it always falls short. It’s a nice product, and if I only needed to write a resume or something simple every once in a while, it would be fine. But in an office environment, there is a lot more I need to do, and OO.org doesn’t cut it.
Not to mention, it’s noticably slower on my systems and the memory usage isn’t too kind.
OO.org is a good alternative sometimes. For those people who just need the basics of an office suite. Though Wordpad and Works (~$50) can probably fulfill that as well. Also, for those who simply can’t afford MSO.
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— “Can you not accept that some people are happy with MS Office?
Where have I said that I do not accept that some people are happy with MS Office??? Where have I said tha Ms office is a bad Office suite ???
“I’ve used OpenOffice many times over the years and it always falls short. It’s a nice product, and if I only needed to write a resume or something simple every once in a while, it would be fine. But in an office environment, there is a lot more I need to do, and OO.org doesn’t cut it. ”
Bullshit
— “Not to mention, it’s noticably slower on my systems and the memory usage isn’t too kind”
Yes , it is slower, mainly because uses Java. OOo is getting almost as good now as Ms Office but,this is one of the negative things you can say about OOo.
“OO.org is a good alternative sometimes. For those people who just need the basics of an office suite. Though Wordpad and Works (~$50) can probably fulfill that as well. Also, for those who simply can’t afford MSO”
Good alternative?? the basics??? wordpad ??? ARE YOU COMPARING OpenOffice Org WITH Wordpad ???
ARE YOU GUY OUT OF YOUR MIND??? ARE YOU A TROLL??? DO Ms PAY YOU???
C’mon guy, you are just telling Bullshit, Sorry.
Try Open Office Org 2.02 for windows, Linux or any other OS and tell me again that is good for the basics like wordpad…
I will not answer anymore this kind of demagogic posts comming from you if you do not change your style…
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Where have I said that I do not accept that some people are happy with MS Office??? Where have I said tha Ms office is a bad Office suite ???
You didn’t, but you told the person to send you money instead and you’ll tell them what you they need for OO.org. My point is that some people are fine with MSO.
Bullshit
Hahaah. Yeah, nice response. Calling bullshit on my personal experience. Classic.
Good alternative?? the basics??? wordpad ??? ARE YOU COMPARING OpenOffice Org WITH Wordpad ???
No, I’m not. I’m saying, a lot of people don’t need anything more than basic formatting, so even OO.org is too much for them (from a size/memory standpoint). Wordpad would suite some people fine for what they use Office for. That’s my point.
OO.org has much much more than Wordpad and Works though.
ARE YOU GUY OUT OF YOUR MIND??? ARE YOU A TROLL??? DO Ms PAY YOU???
Again with the poor accusations. Try something new if you have nothing else to argue with. Don’t freak out because you misunderstood what I said.
I just spent two hours talking with about eight MCSEs and a couple of Linux guys about things that Vista offers that are of interest.
I came down to: faster TCP/IP stack. And only of interest because faster is better.
Everything else in the context of Windows already exists in some form (Sidebar, Game grouping) and is available for Windows or is completely offensive (DRM, mandatory driver signing) and unwanted.
Bottom line: a lot of people who buy new machines with Vista will wipe it to install XP. This is what 10 of us came up with today in this discussion. They mourn the faster TCP/IP stack for servers but none of us are sure that 2003 Server hasn’t or won’t receive the upgrade anyways. One of the die-hard Microsofties (yes I employ some, le sigh) has been trying every beta as they come out and reports that his Laptop is barely usable with it, even though he defends it by saying it picked up every piece of hardware unlike XP, which requires driver disks.
End result: if Microsoft really does deliver what they say they will, very few people with any sort of a clue will want it anyways, and that not only includes but is specific to people who are MS-centric already.
Sorry it isn’t strictly on-topic, but I had to mention it given today’s banter.
As for the new Office, only one real die-hard Office user said she liked the changes coming – but this same person was horrified that there would be changes she would have to deal with should we ask her to use OpenOffice… wait until she tries out the new Office with its bazillion interface changes. She was also horrified to learn that Outlook and other programs will not ship with Home or Student versions.
Edited 2006-03-27 21:44
Yes…
It really is amazing how productive I could be with, say, a basic rich text editor. Think about it..
If that’s all you came up with, you’re not looking very hard.
The redone audio subsystem is very nice. More stable (or at least less dangerous), per-application volume controls, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
WPF is of course very cool. Videoc ard accelerated and composited desktop is welcome for any OS. Add in XAML for developers, and you have a powerful platform for graphics. More than what OSX currently offers even. If you don’t like Aero Glass, I’m sure other themes will come out soon after Vista.
Then there is WinFX. A whole new API intended to eventually replace Win32. And yes, AFAIK it’s .NET. So yes, there is some .NET in Vista. If the transition to WinFX goes well, and people actually use it, they can eventually drop Win32, or just make it emulated at the very least, and that would GREAT help with the complexcity and legacy issue. Even so, WinFX should also be more robust and more secure, because it’s built on a decent platform (.NET) that was actually built with security and safety in mind, instead of thrown on after.
There’s more, if you wish to hear.
Regarding fast TCP/IP stacks, if you wanted ‘fast tcp/ip stacks’, then you’re better off running Solaris, FreeBSD or Linux (commercial support or free, take your choice).
I can understand why end users are glued to Windows – for applications, but I can’t work out for the love of me why people consider using Windows for the server given Solaris + SES (the old JES) is sweet bugger all in terms of what SUN prices their support at; Solaris not your flavour of the month, then chat to Novell or RedHat, heck, if you’re going to maintain it yourself and don’t need Oracle “official blessing’ then you might as well go for Debian, Ubuntu or possibly skip Linux and go for FreeBSD.
Given the situation today; if your main past time at your work is writing documents, emails, spreadsheets and possibly a slideshow, then FreeBSD, Linux or Solaris could do the job quite nicely.
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I couldn’t agree more with you…
And DesktopBSD 1.0(Stable)is out just now in the servers, although the official announcement has not been released yet!
I am going to try it right now! It could be the the Distro with quick and solid grounds, quick TCP/IP stack, security enhanced, lovely desktop (KDE, although many times I am more fond of Gnome or even Xfce…)multimedia, and an a good office suite (1 or 2 Office Suites actually: Koffice and OpenOffice) that I was dreaming of …
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In google labs, right now, http://www.writely.com are maturing to directly compete againt MS Office for casual user, who do not need any advanced editing facilities.. like kids doing homework, ordinary people who just want to write a simple text, or simple small business docs…
And we have also OpenOffice, who doesn’t even need comments.
Delaying the release of such critical (for MS) product, is not a intelligent thing to do now.
I’m starting to be really scared with the internal mess who MS are.
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You are right…
In such kind of bigBigBIG companies, administration is really a hard task, psynergy is many times difficult, and the internal mess is many times unavoidable…
I did woork for ALcatel, for a time, some years ago, and the mess as really unacceptable some times (they call it “bordel” in french), making them lose market opportunities and wasting ressources and money…
Of course being big has also advantages for the companies, but the products of the Big companies are NOT, contrary to what many people thing, better than in a small structure, in many cases. They can/are be actually even worst.
In a small structure they tend to make better products, (and quicker), because, interaction is better, they are forced to innovate quicker, and offer more… and if it is too big for them, well they simply do not make it ( well not always
)…
I guess that Microsoft is going to start having problems all along this decade, because its big relent structure and the new competitors in the OS market, and the Office suites market, their two traditional stronghold domains.
They will attach more to the “Multimedia-Interntet-TV-Video-Cinema-Games” market to make money, and they will play their game calling again the US administration to help them keep their domination…
But things may just be different this time. In Europe and Asia, they have already been warned (or comdemned in cour, fined…) against new monopolistic meaures for this new market.
In Europe they will be forced not to include Windows Media Player with the OS, so they do not repeate the tactics they used to achive the Internet browsers domination… Well, even with all that, they will try and can go away with it using the same or similar tactics, for instance…
So, the next two years will be decisive to you to make up your minds about keeping or selling the Ms Shares you have, and for you to keep your employment with MS or move to a smaller and quicker company, with more possibilities for the next 10-20 years (if you are not fired, what can start to happen in 2 or 3 years if Ms does not keep its current market dominance).
If this is the case, try maybe an open source company. In 10 years Open Source Software companies will have between 50% and 75%, if not more, of the software market, and Open source hardware will have started moving notoriously already…
Don’t believe me…?
Well, its written in my Crystal Ball. And I have some knoledge-experience reading IT-Ecomomic-sociological-marketing crystal balls
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Even if all recent hype is over-exaggerated, this hurts microsoft’s reputation and urges people to look at alternatives.
Linux/OSS will surely gain something from this. KDE4 may come out before windows, and more promising projects will have time for polish, for example XGL. Not to mention that some cool features slated for Vista could appear in FOSS world even before Vista is out.
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Absolutly right, but Jody that posted before you did coudl not get it…
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Edited 2006-03-28 14:34
>The redone audio subsystem is very nice. More stable
>(or at least less dangerous), per-application volume
>controls, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
This means nothing to the end user. The rejoinder is “it should have been stable and nice in the first place.” I can’t think of too many people that aren’t audiophile geeks that will care.
>WPF is of course very cool. Videoc ard accelerated
>and composited desktop is welcome for any OS.
Except when it’s not faster and/or does nothing except bring eye candy to the end user. Everyone that I talked with yesterday said that they turn off 90% or more of the XP interface effects. Most of the die-hards leave the nasty XP menu system and title bar themes, and that’s about it. The big thing is – it doesn’t bring value to the end user in terms of speed or features, and remember these are people using betas.
>Add in XAML for developers, and you have a powerful
>platform for graphics.
You have a “new” platform for graphics. That’s all. How about QT4 + SVG on open source?
>Then there is WinFX. A whole new API intended to
>eventually replace Win32. And yes, AFAIK it’s .NET. >So yes, there is some .NET in Vista.
Where is the value for the end user? Slower code that requires the replacement of more than a decade of experience with WIN32. I’m not saying you’re wrong, what I’m saying is that none of us see this as a compelling advantage.
>Regarding fast TCP/IP stacks, if you wanted ‘fast
>tcp/ip stacks’, then you’re better off running
>Solaris, FreeBSD or Linux (commercial support or
>free, take your choice).
No doubt, but at least it’s a positive change that could be meaningful to end users. Those changes appear to be few and far between on Vista.
>Can you not accept that some people are happy with
>MS Office?
Most of them are happy with Office 97 and don’t want to “upgrade” to the more confusing, less performant newer suite. It’s not entirely by chance that Office 97 put the suite on the map, you know.
> I’ve used OpenOffice many times over the years and > it always falls short.
You must be one of those mythical “power users,” then. They do exist, but don’t think for a second that you are a typical end user if you have a burning need for all the unique features of Office.
> Not to mention, it’s noticably slower on my systems
> and the memory usage isn’t too kind.
If only you could see how much memory Office is using. When you load it into your machine, it sets itself up to preload many components so that you will subjectively feel that Office loads faster than any program suite that large has a right to.
>Though Wordpad and Works (~$50) can probably fulfill
>that as well.
Now we’ve pinned you as a troll or a Microsoft shill. Works is to OpenOffice like edlin is to Emacs.
I think I speak for a lot of people that are technical in that I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to make Windows suck a lot less with the release of Vista. But I also know that the DRM, mandatory driver signing and sluggishness of the upcoming OS are going to directly see to it that many people, maybe even the majority, turn their back on Vista and on Windows in general. Microsoft is obsessed with piracy, DRM and with throwing features at the wall hoping something will stick… what people want by and large is a better program loader that makes their life easier; not a digital nanny with a limp.
Edited 2006-03-28 16:52