Microsoft has released a public beta 2 for Office 2007, and it is now available for download or by mail for anyone that wants to eveluate it. “Evaluate the next release of Microsoft Office products for testing and planning purposes with 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2. The beta release contains all the functionality of the regular release, but is not the final product.”
Good move from MS, I’ll test it righ away.
I wish they would give some incentive to beta testers, like a discount on the final purchase.
I know I will be hooked by the time it expires in Feb 2007 and then I will have to buy it. 🙁
Note to myself: the incentive is that I get to use next year’s software now (albeit a (slightly?) buggy version).
I’ve spent the last 45 minutes playing around with the Word and PowerPoint betas, and so far I’m very impressed.
The new GUI will take some time to get fully used to, but from the first moment it also felt very natural to use and things were where I expected to find them. Given the highly graphical nature of the interface, I was worried that it would feel sluggish, but it feels very fast and the realtime style previews are realtime. (Mind you, I only tested it on small documents)
I was very impressed with the document theme system. It made it very easy to make attractive and professional-looking documents, and the included styles were all very pleasing on the eyes.
It’s also about time that Office got native PDF-support.
I tested the blogging feature on my WordPress blog and it worked great. Just specified the blog location and the username, and it handled the rest. Only part that was a bit problematic was getting it to upload pictures. It uploaded them fine, but linked to the ftp folder where they were uploaded to, so upon visiting the site, it asked for credentials to the FTP-site. *sigh* I hope that’s something they’ll fix before the final release. A look at the blog component documentation showed that it was still pretty WIP. The generated HTML was a pleasant surprise, very clean and not at all like FrontPage.
The downside? Apart from Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint, and partly Outlook that seemed to be a mix of old and new, the other Office apps stick to the Office 2003 layout and haven’t been given the GUI update, so they stick out quite a bit. Also, looking at the hotkey scheme for the menu items, I also got the impression that traversing the toolbars in the apps using the Ribbon using keyboard only can take quite some time to get used to.
But all in all, it’s a huge improvement over Office 2003 and it’s great to see that Microsoft managed to deliver on their promise to make a much friendlier user interface. Those who have Windows installed should definitively give it a go, although I got the feeling the download servers are screaming for mercy at the moment. 😉
The downloader uses .NET 1.1 which, unfortunately, has compatability issues with Vista
Tip to you and everyone else trying to download it: Don’t click Continue when the webpage with “You’re registered, here’s the product keys.” pop up!
The product names on that page are direct download links. If you click that, you won’t have to use the download manager.
Microsoft is hit so hard with this, that it is rejecting web server requests, so nobody can download it at this tmie.
keep trying…it took me about 6 attempts. But once started it saturated my line, 440 MB in less than 20 minutes.
Installing now…
Second. It ate 40Mbit of my 100Mbit line here in Oslo.
Bets on how long it will take OpenOffice to copy MS Office’s interface? Now that’s innovation, baby!
Only if it catches on…
The UI is a pretty major change. I’ve only played with it for a couple of hours and will withhold judgement till I’ve played with it more.
While I don’t find it to be particularly “intuitive”, a new user might.
http://download.esd.licensetech.com/Microsoft/DMMSO12B/PRO/AKAMAIFI…
I dont know what is it with MS, they take a lot of time to develop/deliver the product. Even longer to sort out the bugs. But man when you use MS product you feel like thy are made just for you. All the options are so intutive and user -freindly that you can use every thing without reading any manual. I specially liked the new interface od Word and Outlook.
Added to it is the inclusion of One Note as Beta. I had never purchased One note but always wanted to use it. Its wow.
Thanks MS.
Office 2007 will install on 2003 Server, but it refuses to run if you have configured your OS as a terminal server.
Edit: I was of course refering to this beta only. A message pops up if you try to start this beta on a terminal server.
Edited 2006-05-24 15:07
…why would I need to pay $500 when I’m using OpenOffice.org for free?
You present a pragmatic view which I respect. However do not forget that Microsoft wishes to remain in business and realize that many migrate to OOo. Thus the 2007 release of Office represents a leap forward for the product itself, in contrast to the two previous releases which did not offer any significant usability refinement.
I hope competition in the field will further increase over this. Finally we are getting somewhere, it seems. Hence the simple reply to your little puzzle is: “Because MS believes in their product’s superiority and are prepared to convince customers.”
Furthermore not all Office users are IT wizards. In fact, most are not, and MS knows this. Be prepared to see 2007 heavily marketed towards the business world and MS’ existing customer base.