Barence writes "Microsoft has announced full details of Office 2010 and its plans for an accompanying suite of online applications, and PC Pro has been given special access to a technical preview. Contributing Editor Simon Jones gives his initial verdict on the new suite, concluding that there's 'still a long way to go in terms of fit and finish ... but overall Microsoft has made good strides in increasing usability, cohesiveness and collaboration.' This is followed by detailed first looks at Word 2010, Excel 2010, Outlook 2010 and PowerPoint 2010, with Outlook certainly looking to be the greatest beneficiary. And finally, a gallery of screenshots shows off all the new interface touches in Office 2010, including Outlook's conversation view, Word's picture-editing function and the new cut-and-paste preview option."
Any traction on solving or at least improving Microsoft's ODF implementation? The last time I checked, there were serious issues [odfalliance.org] with the implementation.
By the way, how does Office 2007's "Save-As-PDF" feature compare to the real thing?
It works almost as well as saving a file, any file, under OS X... but uses much more overhead. I have found Office 2007 cumbersome, bloated, breaks standards... I would expect the same best practices in play with this product...
The Save-As-PDF works quite well for us, particularly since it's a compromise somewhere between the crappy third-party app option and the thousands of dollars that Adobe's products cost us in years past.
Outlook 2007's rendering, OTOH, makes me want to kill people and break things.
I'm kind of curious. What makes Microsoft's version of ODF any worse than anyone elses? Or for that matter, what makes OOo's any better? Just because OOo's non-standard spreadsheet formula is used more commonly doesn't make it better.
Until ODF 1.2 is out, it's just a bunch of he-said-she-said.
Yes. I've read it before. Other than one part that is false, the rest is hand waving.
It basically says "Yeah, we know the standard doesn't specify so much stuff that the only way to be compatible is to get people to agree on how to do things.."
That's not "interoperability", that's "praying" everyone manages to make it work.
The part about section 8.3.1 is completely bogus. Read the specification yourself. 8.3.1 says nothing about requiring brackets.
You are conflating "more compatible" with "more conformant".
There is no standard sepcification for formulas to be "conformant" to. Yes, the CleverAge plug-in was more interoperable with OOo impelementation than SP2 is, but because the impelemantion of such things is not defined by the standaard, both are equally "conformant".
If you were a programmer, you'd understand. Spend some time on the C++ std newsgroups, and when someone mentions some "undefined" behavior, you get blasted that "undefined can do anyt
You're still missing the point. No, standards don't force anyone to do anything, but you can at least say "You're not conforming to the standard".
And as I said, yes, you can weasel word your way around any standard, but that's not what Microsoft is doing.
The only reason that so many apps that use ODF are interoperable is because they all chose to reverse engineer the way OOo did it, or they used OOo's code. That's called a de-facto standard, which is what.doc and.xls are. de-facto standards are not good.
Forrester Research surveys have shown that the percentage of people who liked the Ribbon interface in Office 2007 was in the mid to high 80s while the percentage who found it "significantly more difficult" to use was 2.4%.
I find that hard to believe. How many of those people they asked actually used office as a mission critical application in their day to day use? In my admittedly small sample, nobody that I work with at all enjoys using the ribbons, which is about 5 that I have spoken to about it. The majority of people have Office 2003 put on instead, only those who are reluctant to change software on their computers leave it on.
Well it's a good thing that your incredulity doesn't override statistical evidence.
How many of those people they asked actually used office as a mission critical application in their day to day use? In my admittedly small sample, nobody that I work with at all enjoys using the ribbons, which is about 5 that I have spoken to about it.
In my larger sample of about 30-50 people almost all of them enjoy the new GUI and once they start using Office 2007 for a few weeks they never want to go back to 2003. I guess this is why anecdotes aren't good evidence of something.
Well it's a good thing that your incredulity doesn't override statistical evidence.
You want statistical evidence? Look here [exceluser.com], from a survey of Excel users from May, 2009:
Month in and month out, the respondents have said that Excel's Ribbon has reduced their productivity by an average of about 20%. And users with a negative opinion of the Ribbon estimate that it's reduced their productivity by about 35%.
They found that 36% of advanced and 29% of intermediate users "hate or dislike" the ribbons, which vastly outweighs the people who "love or like" the ribbons at 20 and 24%, respectively.
In my very humble opinion, and as an additional (possibly worthless) data point, people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything (like me).
The rest of the demographic that tends to use Office software - you know, the millions of corporate users that still have the default background, theme, sounds and everything else that originally came with their laptop or desktop - the ribbon tends to be a little baffling at first and eventually extremely useful to them, because it mirrors the way they work. That's the reason it was designed and why it was introduced with 2007.
Microsoft places much more importance on the latter group and tends to make design decisions based on their working habits and patterns. If you are part of the first group, it's best to get used to that fact.
And of course, there are millions of people still using Office 2003 and even 2000.
Microsoft themselves actually have a presentation [msdn.com] describing their process of designing and refining the Ribbon, by Jenson Harris ('Group Porgam Manager of the Office UX Team'). They talk a little bit about the user feedback stats and how they made some decisions regarding the ribbon... it's an interesting video if you have some time and are interested in that sort of thing.
Wait, a survey that uses percentages estimated by the surveyed? Wow, that's not only inaccurate, it's inaccurately inaccurate. Everyone with a bone to pick will more than likely grossly over-estimate their inconvenience.
Still, the numbers say that 64% of advanced and 71% of intermediate users either have no opinion or like the ribbon. That seems like an overall win to me. I note you don't include novices, which given the trend sould be as high as 85 or 90% who like or have no opinion of it.
I should have read your link first, so my figures are wrong.
However, having read the link, I'm baffled by such claims as "On average, all users who responded estimated that the Ribbon has reduced their productivity."
"on average" and "all users" do not belong in the same sentence. WTF?
That sounds like someone trying to use statistics and weasel words to say something the statistics don't actually say.
Still the survey's numbers look good, but don't really make a lot of sense because of the way they're presen
here (douzens of thousands of heavy Office users), we're not quite done testing all our stuff with 2007 (our documents are fine, but some plugins have to be upgraded, and integration with in house apps have to be tested, etc), but we have to hold users back with chains from upgrading to 2007 (well, its a metaphore obviously, they can't upgrade on their own). -EVERYONE- wants it. Bad. The UI is a lot better for people who don't know Office by heart, and there's a lot of new features, mainly in the business intelligence integration and collaboration that make people drool over it.
Microsoft has long been promoting "good enough" approach to things. It isn't the most secure... it is good enough. It isn't the most robust... it is good enough. It isn't the most productive... it is good enough.
This is the Achilles heal of Microsoft. With Windows XP and Office since 2000 or even 2003, has been "good enough". I can't think of ANYTHING Microsoft can offer in Win 7 or Office 2010 that I would actually use. And changing how things work, just for the sake of changing how they work, is counter productive.
In early 2003 I made the statement that 2008 was going to be the first sign of Microsoft's demise as tech leader. The Storm has hit, and is now ravaging Microsoft. Google is building Chrome OS (which I would assume is tied to Android... somewhere), Open Office is very usable, Wine is getting to the point of being solid, Linux is appearing on desktops, Webservices, mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Android) etc.
You can see the panic at Microsoft in their web services division, from the search engines changes to Live and now to Bing. You can see the panic in the OS and Office with the huge changes in the UI to cover up that really nothing has changed since 2000.
Microsoft is suffering from the "good enough" syndrome. Everything they have made for the last 6 or 8 years is "good enough" and when Vista comes along and changes things just to change things, people buck against it. You'll see more of the same with Office.
I honestly think one of the reasons Gates left, was because he saw the writing on the wall, and got out while the getting was good.
I agree that it's a start, but I can't see Microsoft ever "dying" outright. All I see is a few pieces of competition, perhaps a few that will grab a few more percentage points of market share from Microsoft every year.
The interesting note to watch is what happens when the next generation of computer users comes forward. Teenagers these days know a lot more about computers than their parents do, on average. They understand the difference between Mac and Windows (and a heck of a lot know about Ubuntu - more
You're right, but there's one other important thing about Microsoft you have to realize:
When they have no competition, they don't bother. When Microsoft's web browser competition dissolved away, we ended up with IE6 for years and years and years-- when the web browser competition picked-up again, thanks to Mozilla and Apple and later Google, suddenly, WHAM! IE7, IE8, back to a regular development schedule, tons of great features.
Office moves slow because it has very little serious competition. And, hell, ev
Not really. Open Office resembles MS Office 2000 more than MS Office 2007(2010??). Therefore, people are willing to go to OO rather than have change.
And Linux can be configured to look and function just like XP, and Ubuntu, except for the "start bar" being at the top, functions almost like XP for most things.
Further, if people are being made (forced) to "learn" something new, they are more willing to look at alternatives, like OO and Linux or even Apple.
The point being, if people are having to "change" they
Word's been around, what, 20 years? Guys, if you want to provide maximum usability to use users, leave it alone. We've all figured out how the app works, what the keyboard shortcuts are, where in each menu our most-used commands are, and how to use mail merge. STOP CHANGING IT. Every time you change how Word works, all you're doing is decreasing my usability and needlessly taking away time I could otherwise spend doing actual productive work.
Full disclosure: I've been trying to avoid Office for the past year or so, relying on Apple's Pages instead - in part simply because Word is a bloated beast, and in part because Microsoft just keeps pointlessly adding useless crap and changing things to give the illusion of "innovation".
Yes, But you are getting old and are going to die and you probably have no intention of buying a new version of Word since you are happy with the current one.
New users will see a wierdly arcane program or an easy to use (for a novice) program.
Think of these versions of word as targeted to naive users.
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What I can't see is how they intend to compete with free (Openoffice) when we have 25% real unemployment and no growth in sales for the rest- with the corrupted financial industry pillaging and looting heavily from the 75% that are still producing.
> What I can't see is how they intend to compete with free (Openoffice)
Simple. By giving away Office Web Edition for free on the web, via live.com. (This was mentioned quite widely in the tech press but the/. summary doesn't mention in specifically.) Frankly, given that I prefer Google Docs over OpenOffice, if Office Web is any good it'll be the 800lb gorilla in the market.
I find OpenOffice quirky and unreliable. It often crashes for me.
2001 called and wants that review back. I've used OO on Linux, Windows XP, and Vista. On old machines, brand new ones and everything in between. And the number of times it's crashed on me or here at the office where we also use it....
0
Quirky you can argue, especially if you're used to something else. But if it crashes your computer, then your computer has much bigger problems.
I would argue that OpenOffice Writer is inferior. It's slower. It's ugly. It lacks a lot of the niceties of Word 2007 (unless they added stuff like the formatting-menu-on-hover gizmo that Word 2007 has in a recent release, I haven't installed it since 3.0 and didn't really play with it much).
It's a workable program, but it's not really as good as either 2003 or 2007. Frankly I think KOffice has a better chance of being a really good Office competitor than OpenOffice ever will.
I fit that statement too, and I bought Office 2007 after using it on school computers. Why? Because the difference in productivity between 2003 (which I already owned, so I had no reason to use OpenOffice) and 2007 is huge. It's just a hell of a lot nicer to actually work with, and I dig it. The cost, as high as it was (like $60 or something), was worth it because the improvements are that good.
So just stop upgrading. Files from recent versions go back and forth about as well as files from the same version, so compatibility isn't a huge problem.
Yes, I do expect Word 2003 to work on Windows 8 and 9.
Microsoft's support for binary backwards compatibility is generally better than Linux support for source backwards compatibility (the source has the advantage that you can fix it after it has been broken, but in practical terms, a Windows binary from 1995 is more likely to work on Vista than an unedited open source program from 1995 is to directly compile on Ubuntu 8.04).
And really, I don't have any trouble upgrading software (I tend to believe that the hundreds of thousands of dollars Microsoft spends on usability testing is probably productive) or keeping track of install media for expensive software (To test this, I just eyeballed my Windows 95 CD that came with the computer I purchased in 1997).
Just because "View / Header and Footer" is the way you're used to doing it, doesn't mean it's the best way. Word has been evolving and expanding all this time. You can only shoehorn new features into the old UI for so long before it becomes convoluted.
To learn the new ribbon all you have to do is think about what you are trying to accomplish and then navigate where you think it ought to belong. The new layout means you will find related functions that will improve your productivity and quality of communi
â¦but can PowerPoint incorporate BOTH a landscape and portrait setting in the same slideshow yet? Or can users rearrange the Quick Access Toolbar by dragging the icons around instead of the retarded way of going into the Options/Customize area? Or Excel open with the page break showing, as in dotted lines showing the margins?
Word has had a style inspector since Office 2003 (or possibly Office XP). It'll tell you exactly what formatting has been applied to the text, and it's pretty easy to reset it. Screenshot: http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9540/o2007.png [imageshack.us]
Is anyone else thinking that we may not have seen this early preview if it hadn't been for last week's announcement from Google of the upcoming Chrome OS, twisting Microsoft's arm into announcing something, anything at all?
Unlikely. Microsoft partners have bigger customers already have had access to the Office 2010 preview for months now. I'm amazed it took that long for it to be seen in public (though there were already some previews and screenshots, including official ones by microsoft bloggers, for a while now)
1: It takes away valuable vertical screen real estate and cannot be repositioned to less valuable side areas.
2: It changes based on what it's Application Telepathy thinks you are doing.
3: You are not even offered the option of backwards compatibility to the old, customizable, fixed menuing system -- Microsoft dictates that they know what's best for you!
Can forced Dvorak keyboards with no QWERTY option be far behind?
Have you set foot in a typical large business lately? These people live and die by these things, on -TOP- of using wikis and such. A big part of it is that you can't really link a customer waiting to sign a 15 million dollar contract a link to a wiki, and the accounting department can't do their "one shot deal" calculations on their blog.
Try adding "in my basement" to the end of each of the GP's sentences and you can understand his perspective a bit more.
... for software that really isn't needed these days in my basement. Other than a one-off printed letter, what place does a word processing document have in today's world of Wikis and such in my basement? Same with spreadsheets in my basement. Great for high school and college labs, and quick what-if stuff, but outside of that, should they really be used in my basement (don't get me started on the number of spreadsheet 'databases' or printable tables are out there in my basement).
So what you're saying is that when a company makes changes to something it is bad, but when it refuses to change things it is bad. I thought that Microsoft wasn't making enough changes to its software to keep up with other innovations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has ever attempted to create an interface like the Ribbon before in an office suite. So when Microsoft comes up with something new, suddenly it's not okay to be running for the new.
This community constantly rails against how Microsoft has aped other OS vendors to try to make their products better, and then rails against Microsoft trying to innovate in their own software. It's like every post is a new punch bowl filled with red kool-aid stupid. Could we please get past the 1990's Microsoft vs. Linux attitude and admit that it's possible for one arm of a company to do bad things while another arm of the company does good things? Not everything boils down to a "good vs. evil" essential conflict.
It wouldn't be so bad, if they would just put in a 'classic' mode for Office.
I mean, they do it for Windows (I've not gone past XP yet, dunno if they do it for Vista). I prefer the classic mode, I like to use and view the directory structure, that's how I'm used to working. I don't like when they try to abstract too much for my 'benefit'.
Outlook has supported threaded mail for a long time. The feature they were trying to highlight was the ability to condense the content of the thread to a single (or small number of) message when much of the content in the replies is the same (ie the previous sender's message quoted back in a reply). Therefore you could look at the top-level of the thread and possibly read the whole thread without having to go through several messages, most of which contain the previous messages quoted over and over again.
Outlook's had Threaded View for decades. I don't exactly know what "conversation view" is, but it's something new.
But good job posting your ignorant bullshit for everybody to read. I guess it's easier to lie about what features Outlook has than to check your facts. Why do people mod up posts that *make shit up*?
ODF (Score:5, Insightful)
Any traction on solving or at least improving Microsoft's ODF implementation? The last time I checked, there were serious issues [odfalliance.org] with the implementation.
By the way, how does Office 2007's "Save-As-PDF" feature compare to the real thing?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ODF (Score:4, Informative)
The Save-As-PDF works quite well for us, particularly since it's a compromise somewhere between the crappy third-party app option and the thousands of dollars that Adobe's products cost us in years past.
Outlook 2007's rendering, OTOH, makes me want to kill people and break things.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm kind of curious. What makes Microsoft's version of ODF any worse than anyone elses? Or for that matter, what makes OOo's any better? Just because OOo's non-standard spreadsheet formula is used more commonly doesn't make it better.
Until ODF 1.2 is out, it's just a bunch of he-said-she-said.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. I've read it before. Other than one part that is false, the rest is hand waving.
It basically says "Yeah, we know the standard doesn't specify so much stuff that the only way to be compatible is to get people to agree on how to do things.."
That's not "interoperability", that's "praying" everyone manages to make it work.
The part about section 8.3.1 is completely bogus. Read the specification yourself. 8.3.1 says nothing about requiring brackets.
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v [oasis-open.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You are conflating "more compatible" with "more conformant".
There is no standard sepcification for formulas to be "conformant" to. Yes, the CleverAge plug-in was more interoperable with OOo impelementation than SP2 is, but because the impelemantion of such things is not defined by the standaard, both are equally "conformant".
If you were a programmer, you'd understand. Spend some time on the C++ std newsgroups, and when someone mentions some "undefined" behavior, you get blasted that "undefined can do anyt
Re:What makes MS's version of ODF worse (Score:4, Insightful)
You're still missing the point. No, standards don't force anyone to do anything, but you can at least say "You're not conforming to the standard".
And as I said, yes, you can weasel word your way around any standard, but that's not what Microsoft is doing.
The only reason that so many apps that use ODF are interoperable is because they all chose to reverse engineer the way OOo did it, or they used OOo's code. That's called a de-facto standard, which is what .doc and .xls are. de-facto standards are not good.
Parent
ribbons (Score:5, Interesting)
I find that hard to believe. How many of those people they asked actually used office as a mission critical application in their day to day use? In my admittedly small sample, nobody that I work with at all enjoys using the ribbons, which is about 5 that I have spoken to about it. The majority of people have Office 2003 put on instead, only those who are reluctant to change software on their computers leave it on.
Re:ribbons (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that hard to believe.
Well it's a good thing that your incredulity doesn't override statistical evidence.
How many of those people they asked actually used office as a mission critical application in their day to day use? In my admittedly small sample, nobody that I work with at all enjoys using the ribbons, which is about 5 that I have spoken to about it.
In my larger sample of about 30-50 people almost all of them enjoy the new GUI and once they start using Office 2007 for a few weeks they never want to go back to 2003. I guess this is why anecdotes aren't good evidence of something.
Parent
Re:ribbons (Score:5, Informative)
You want statistical evidence? Look here [exceluser.com], from a survey of Excel users from May, 2009:
They found that 36% of advanced and 29% of intermediate users "hate or dislike" the ribbons, which vastly outweighs the people who "love or like" the ribbons at 20 and 24%, respectively.
How 'about them apples?
Parent
Re:ribbons (Score:5, Insightful)
In my very humble opinion, and as an additional (possibly worthless) data point, people that dislike the ribbon interface are more likely to be "power users" that tinker and customize everything (like me).
The rest of the demographic that tends to use Office software - you know, the millions of corporate users that still have the default background, theme, sounds and everything else that originally came with their laptop or desktop - the ribbon tends to be a little baffling at first and eventually extremely useful to them, because it mirrors the way they work. That's the reason it was designed and why it was introduced with 2007.
Microsoft places much more importance on the latter group and tends to make design decisions based on their working habits and patterns. If you are part of the first group, it's best to get used to that fact.
And of course, there are millions of people still using Office 2003 and even 2000.
Parent
Re:ribbons (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait, a survey that uses percentages estimated by the surveyed? Wow, that's not only inaccurate, it's inaccurately inaccurate. Everyone with a bone to pick will more than likely grossly over-estimate their inconvenience.
Still, the numbers say that 64% of advanced and 71% of intermediate users either have no opinion or like the ribbon. That seems like an overall win to me. I note you don't include novices, which given the trend sould be as high as 85 or 90% who like or have no opinion of it.
Since you can
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I should have read your link first, so my figures are wrong.
However, having read the link, I'm baffled by such claims as "On average, all users who responded estimated that the Ribbon has reduced their productivity."
"on average" and "all users" do not belong in the same sentence. WTF?
That sounds like someone trying to use statistics and weasel words to say something the statistics don't actually say.
Still the survey's numbers look good, but don't really make a lot of sense because of the way they're presen
Re:ribbons (Score:4, Informative)
here (douzens of thousands of heavy Office users), we're not quite done testing all our stuff with 2007 (our documents are fine, but some plugins have to be upgraded, and integration with in house apps have to be tested, etc), but we have to hold users back with chains from upgrading to 2007 (well, its a metaphore obviously, they can't upgrade on their own). -EVERYONE- wants it. Bad. The UI is a lot better for people who don't know Office by heart, and there's a lot of new features, mainly in the business intelligence integration and collaboration that make people drool over it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And 85% couldn't find the damn print option hidden under the shiny round globe thing in the corner...
Good Enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has long been promoting "good enough" approach to things. It isn't the most secure ... it is good enough. It isn't the most robust ... it is good enough. It isn't the most productive ... it is good enough.
This is the Achilles heal of Microsoft. With Windows XP and Office since 2000 or even 2003, has been "good enough". I can't think of ANYTHING Microsoft can offer in Win 7 or Office 2010 that I would actually use. And changing how things work, just for the sake of changing how they work, is counter productive.
In early 2003 I made the statement that 2008 was going to be the first sign of Microsoft's demise as tech leader. The Storm has hit, and is now ravaging Microsoft. Google is building Chrome OS (which I would assume is tied to Android ... somewhere), Open Office is very usable, Wine is getting to the point of being solid, Linux is appearing on desktops, Webservices, mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Android) etc.
You can see the panic at Microsoft in their web services division, from the search engines changes to Live and now to Bing. You can see the panic in the OS and Office with the huge changes in the UI to cover up that really nothing has changed since 2000.
Microsoft is suffering from the "good enough" syndrome. Everything they have made for the last 6 or 8 years is "good enough" and when Vista comes along and changes things just to change things, people buck against it. You'll see more of the same with Office.
I honestly think one of the reasons Gates left, was because he saw the writing on the wall, and got out while the getting was good.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The interesting note to watch is what happens when the next generation of computer users comes forward. Teenagers these days know a lot more about computers than their parents do, on average. They understand the difference between Mac and Windows (and a heck of a lot know about Ubuntu - more
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right, but there's one other important thing about Microsoft you have to realize:
When they have no competition, they don't bother. When Microsoft's web browser competition dissolved away, we ended up with IE6 for years and years and years-- when the web browser competition picked-up again, thanks to Mozilla and Apple and later Google, suddenly, WHAM! IE7, IE8, back to a regular development schedule, tons of great features.
Office moves slow because it has very little serious competition. And, hell, ev
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Open Office resembles MS Office 2000 more than MS Office 2007(2010??). Therefore, people are willing to go to OO rather than have change.
And Linux can be configured to look and function just like XP, and Ubuntu, except for the "start bar" being at the top, functions almost like XP for most things.
Further, if people are being made (forced) to "learn" something new, they are more willing to look at alternatives, like OO and Linux or even Apple.
The point being, if people are having to "change" they
Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:4, Insightful)
Word's been around, what, 20 years? Guys, if you want to provide maximum usability to use users, leave it alone. We've all figured out how the app works, what the keyboard shortcuts are, where in each menu our most-used commands are, and how to use mail merge. STOP CHANGING IT. Every time you change how Word works, all you're doing is decreasing my usability and needlessly taking away time I could otherwise spend doing actual productive work.
Full disclosure: I've been trying to avoid Office for the past year or so, relying on Apple's Pages instead - in part simply because Word is a bloated beast, and in part because Microsoft just keeps pointlessly adding useless crap and changing things to give the illusion of "innovation".
Re:Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes,
But you are getting old and are going to die and you probably have no intention of buying a new version of Word since you are happy with the current one.
New users will see a wierdly arcane program or an easy to use (for a novice) program.
Think of these versions of word as targeted to naive users.
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What I can't see is how they intend to compete with free (Openoffice) when we have 25% real unemployment and no growth in sales for the rest- with the corrupted financial industry pillaging and looting heavily from the 75% that are still producing.
Parent
Re:Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:4, Interesting)
> What I can't see is how they intend to compete with free (Openoffice)
Simple. By giving away Office Web Edition for free on the web, via live.com. (This was mentioned quite widely in the tech press but the /. summary doesn't mention in specifically.) Frankly, given that I prefer Google Docs over OpenOffice, if Office Web is any good it'll be the 800lb gorilla in the market.
Parent
2001 called (Score:4, Informative)
I find OpenOffice quirky and unreliable. It often crashes for me.
2001 called and wants that review back. I've used OO on Linux, Windows XP, and Vista. On old machines, brand new ones and everything in between. And the number of times it's crashed on me or here at the office where we also use it....
0
Quirky you can argue, especially if you're used to something else. But if it crashes your computer, then your computer has much bigger problems.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would argue that OpenOffice Writer is inferior. It's slower. It's ugly. It lacks a lot of the niceties of Word 2007 (unless they added stuff like the formatting-menu-on-hover gizmo that Word 2007 has in a recent release, I haven't installed it since 3.0 and didn't really play with it much).
It's a workable program, but it's not really as good as either 2003 or 2007. Frankly I think KOffice has a better chance of being a really good Office competitor than OpenOffice ever will.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I fit that statement too, and I bought Office 2007 after using it on school computers. Why? Because the difference in productivity between 2003 (which I already owned, so I had no reason to use OpenOffice) and 2007 is huge. It's just a hell of a lot nicer to actually work with, and I dig it. The cost, as high as it was (like $60 or something), was worth it because the improvements are that good.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So just stop upgrading. Files from recent versions go back and forth about as well as files from the same version, so compatibility isn't a huge problem.
Re:Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I do expect Word 2003 to work on Windows 8 and 9.
Microsoft's support for binary backwards compatibility is generally better than Linux support for source backwards compatibility (the source has the advantage that you can fix it after it has been broken, but in practical terms, a Windows binary from 1995 is more likely to work on Vista than an unedited open source program from 1995 is to directly compile on Ubuntu 8.04).
And really, I don't have any trouble upgrading software (I tend to believe that the hundreds of thousands of dollars Microsoft spends on usability testing is probably productive) or keeping track of install media for expensive software (To test this, I just eyeballed my Windows 95 CD that came with the computer I purchased in 1997).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because "View / Header and Footer" is the way you're used to doing it, doesn't mean it's the best way. Word has been evolving and expanding all this time. You can only shoehorn new features into the old UI for so long before it becomes convoluted.
To learn the new ribbon all you have to do is think about what you are trying to accomplish and then navigate where you think it ought to belong. The new layout means you will find related functions that will improve your productivity and quality of communi
Re:Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Memo to Microsoft: Leave it alone (Score:4, Insightful)
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But...still not fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
or how about Excel's cut & paste functionality working in even remotely the same fashion as everywhere else in Windows (or Office)?
The Ribbon... (Score:3, Interesting)
...is the new Clippy. If you want people to use Office, you need to get rid of it.
WordPerfect 5.1 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember a WordPerfect demo for the Atari ST. Everyone in attendance agreed then that WP was gross overkill for just about everyone.
For most people that have to put up with msword for no other reason to "be compatable", that's still true.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Word has had a style inspector since Office 2003 (or possibly Office XP). It'll tell you exactly what formatting has been applied to the text, and it's pretty easy to reset it. Screenshot: http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/9540/o2007.png [imageshack.us]
Not so surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unlikely. Microsoft partners have bigger customers already have had access to the Office 2010 preview for months now. I'm amazed it took that long for it to be seen in public (though there were already some previews and screenshots, including official ones by microsoft bloggers, for a while now)
First Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Would be the first time that MS has tried to force an OS upgrade.
Three Reasons to Hate the Ribbon (Score:5, Insightful)
2: It changes based on what it's Application Telepathy thinks you are doing.
3: You are not even offered the option of backwards compatibility to the old, customizable, fixed menuing system -- Microsoft dictates that they know what's best for you!
Can forced Dvorak keyboards with no QWERTY option be far behind?
Re:who uses it anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
me neither.
office 97 had enough features already. the bloat continues ever forward.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
wine already supports office. Winedoors is free and makes installing office dead easy.
Crossover office costs money but makes it even more brain-dead easy.
Re:Office on Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
Between Windows, Doors, and Offices, it's pretty clear that programmers need to get outside more.
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Re:A lot of effort and money (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you set foot in a typical large business lately? These people live and die by these things, on -TOP- of using wikis and such. A big part of it is that you can't really link a customer waiting to sign a 15 million dollar contract a link to a wiki, and the accounting department can't do their "one shot deal" calculations on their blog.
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Re:A lot of effort and money (Score:4, Funny)
Mod parent -1 incredibly naive
Try adding "in my basement" to the end of each of the GP's sentences and you can understand his perspective a bit more.
... for software that really isn't needed these days in my basement. Other than a one-off printed letter, what place does a word processing document have in today's world of Wikis and such in my basement? Same with spreadsheets in my basement. Great for high school and college labs, and quick what-if stuff, but outside of that, should they really be used in my basement (don't get me started on the number of spreadsheet 'databases' or printable tables are out there in my basement).
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Re:Not again! (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that when a company makes changes to something it is bad, but when it refuses to change things it is bad. I thought that Microsoft wasn't making enough changes to its software to keep up with other innovations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nobody has ever attempted to create an interface like the Ribbon before in an office suite. So when Microsoft comes up with something new, suddenly it's not okay to be running for the new.
This community constantly rails against how Microsoft has aped other OS vendors to try to make their products better, and then rails against Microsoft trying to innovate in their own software. It's like every post is a new punch bowl filled with red kool-aid stupid. Could we please get past the 1990's Microsoft vs. Linux attitude and admit that it's possible for one arm of a company to do bad things while another arm of the company does good things? Not everything boils down to a "good vs. evil" essential conflict.
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Re:Not again! (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, they do it for Windows (I've not gone past XP yet, dunno if they do it for Vista). I prefer the classic mode, I like to use and view the directory structure, that's how I'm used to working. I don't like when they try to abstract too much for my 'benefit'.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Outlook has supported threaded mail for a long time. The feature they were trying to highlight was the ability to condense the content of the thread to a single (or small number of) message when much of the content in the replies is the same (ie the previous sender's message quoted back in a reply). Therefore you could look at the top-level of the thread and possibly read the whole thread without having to go through several messages, most of which contain the previous messages quoted over and over again.
Ho
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Outlook's had Threaded View for decades. I don't exactly know what "conversation view" is, but it's something new.
But good job posting your ignorant bullshit for everybody to read. I guess it's easier to lie about what features Outlook has than to check your facts. Why do people mod up posts that *make shit up*?