Office Archive

Last week, IBM unveiled the first version of their OpenOffice.org offshoot, Lotus Symphony. Symphony is aimed at professional users in a corporate environment, but brings to OpenOffice.org many UI enhancements in an attractive, single tabbed interface. Symphony 1.0 runs on Windows and Linux; while the site used to suggest a Mac version was forthcoming, there is currently no reference to a Mac native version of Symphony. The Lotus Symphony website has been updated to reflect the recent release, however, downloads are very slow at the moment "due to high demand."

eWeek's Debra Donston has penned down five ways the end user desktop in enterprises will look different in five years. While some of her ideas and predictions make a low of sense, there are a few things which are slightly debatable. Mostly, the reliance on virtualisation and web applications.

In a June 2003 Wired Magazine interview, Martha Stewart said, "Bill Gates' house, for example, is totally out of date now. He built it right before wireless happened. The big tunnels for all his wires - he doesn't need any of that stuff anymore." The article wasn't about networking, or even technology, but I was struck by that statement because it was echoed by several people when I was explaining that I was running many thousands of feet of cable in OSNews' "house of the future." "Is all that cable really necessary now that there's wireless everything?" people said. As much as I respect Martha Stewart's business and design acumen, neither she, nor those people who talked to me, know what they're talking about. When it comes to networking, there's no substitute for a wire, when a wire's available. -- This is the latest entry in our 2008 Article Contest.

Microsoft has released the first service pack to Microsoft Office:Mac 2008. The company also said that sales of Office:Mac 2008 have "soared", and that it is "selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years". Microsoft also had a surprise announcement about Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) support.

"Microsoft's embattled Office Open XML document format received ISO fast-track approval after receiving support from approximately 86 percent of the national bodies that participated in the vote. ISO approval will be broadly perceived as a sign of validation for the document format which has received widespread criticism from technical experts and standards advocacy groups."

Version 2.4 of the OpenOffice productivity suite was released on Thursday, boasting enhancements to all its core components. Possibly the most significant alteration in the new version of the free suite is in the description of file types. The 'OpenDocument' description has been replaced by 'ODF', which stands for 'OpenDocument Format' and is becoming a well-known acronym thanks to rivalry with Microsoft's controversial OOXML format.

"There's been quite a bit of buzz recently after it was announced that OpenOffice 3 was due in September. It seems, however, most people still aren't aware of what's in store. The Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place. We managed to find this conference presentation lurking in the shadows before running away in fear of mid 90’s web design. Here's the best bits."

Microsoft has released Office:Mac 2008. "The suite is a major step forward for those who prefer to use the Redmond company's applications for the Mac platform. Since its last update in 2004, much has changed on the Windows side: this effectively brings Apple customers up to speed." Ars sat down with the Mac Business Unit at MacWorld.

"Following our policy strategy to publish releases on a regular basis, OpenOffice.org 2.3.1 is available for download now. Although it is primarily a maintenance release, we recommend users to install the release due to a security fix. Full details of the changes may be found in the Release Notes associated with the release."

A group formed five years ago to promote the OpenDocument Format has abandoned ODF and will favor one developed by the World Wide Web Consortium known as the 'Compound Document Format', or CDF. The OpenDocument Foundation's format failed to meet market requirements, the group said.

Microsoft said that Office 2008 will come in three versions. The "core" version, Office 2008 for Mac, including all the applications plus Automator and Microsoft Exchange Server support, will cost USD 399.95, with a USD 239.95 upgrade price. Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student Edition will allow three user licenses, but it won't include the Automator and Exchange Server support. It will cost USD 149.95 for the retail version, with no upgrade pricing announced. New to the lineup will be Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition, which will add Microsoft Expression Media for Mac, a revised version of the iView Media digital asset management utility. iView was acquired by Microsoft in 2006. This version will cost USD 499.95, with a USD 299.95 upgrade price.

OpenOffice.org 2.3 has been released. "Available for download now, OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. It is a major release and all users should download it."

Adobe may launch its own office-application suite, taking it into direct competition with Microsoft. In an interview, Mike Downey, group manager for platform evangelism at Adobe, said that, although he could not reveal any plans at the moment, the possibility should not be dismissed.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has officially thrown its weight behind Microsoft's Office Open XML format along with the OASIS Open Document Format. In July, the commonwealth added Microsoft's format, also known as Ecma-376 or Open XML, to the list of approved standards in a draft of the Massachusetts ETRM, an architectural framework used to identify the standards, specifications and technologies that support Massachusetts' computing environment.