Microsoft Windows 7 and Office 14 will launch on different dates
By Gareth Powell
Microsoft Windows 7 is effectively launched, Microsoft Office 14 looks more like being with us in 2010, Windows Mobile 7 will be about the same date, 2010.
Does it make an immense difference that Microsoft Office 14 will be late?
Actually not.
The key date is the launching of Microsoft Windows 7 so that we can get that nasty taste of Vista out of our mouths. Vista is the operating system that Microsoft would like to forget. Sort of Windows ME revisited.
So testers are being told go active now and Microsoft Windows 7 will be available on all new computers — which is often how you will tell they are new computers — as from, say, the end of this month.
Analysts will make much of these split dates but, in truth, they matter little.
Microsoft Office — no matter what number you call it — leads the pack of Office programs by such a margin it is almost ludicrous.
Take on any new employee and they will probably know how to use Microsoft Office.
Yes, you may need to show them little tricks and foibles of your particular system. Maybe you use ‘%’ instead of ‘per cent.’ Maybe one thousand is 1,000 or 1000. But these are quirks and quickly learned and there is nothing else that comes near.
Anyone who has worked extensively with the Google system will attest to that.
So, yes, it would be nice if Microsoft Office 14 came out at the same time as Windows 7 but it is not going to shake the world. The fact is it is most likely to be a collection of fixes and twiddles so that Microsoft Office will fit more easily with the Internet, not with Windows 7.
Analysts and columnists may make much of it. The public will hardly notice.
As far as a mobile operating system was concerned Channel Web reported that Steve Ballmer acknowledged that ‘all of the consumer mojo’ is with Apple’s iPhone and, ‘to a lesser extent,’ RIM’s BlackBerry.
Which is very decent of him.
But then he got his Microsoft plug in by saying ‘the real market momentum’ is with smartphone manufacturers and phone service providers that use Windows Mobile. He gave no solid figures, no examples. He was wise not to do that.
He also once again confirmed that Microsoft has no intention of building its own smartphone, preferring to sell its software to a broad range of device makers.
(Microsoft HAS built hardware before and, and usually, it has been an unmitigated disaster. People working at Microsoft would not use Microsoft built keyboards.)
He did say Windows Mobile and the core Windows operating system would become ‘closer in many ways as the distinction between desktop and mobile devices narrows.
He said, perceptively, ‘There’s still a real distinction between what’s a phone and what’s a PC. And yet the amount of technology that can be shared across that border continues to go up.’
Microsoft released the public beta of Windows 7, also known as build 7000, in early January. Earlier this month the company officially slammed the door shut on its Windows 7 beta download program. Although it is widely illegally available the general public will have to wait a little while to get their claws on it.
Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better.
As to Office 14 will be with us sooner or later and many users will just ignore it. They are happy with what they have and they do not wish to change it. But they may wish to share documents on the Web so it plans to bundle Web versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote with Office 14.
PC World thinks that it means that Office 14 will be a lighter, smaller, Web-friendly suite. Which makes sense although how many people will upgrade is open for guessing. Something, perhaps, over 20 percent. Not much more than than unless there is a compelling enough reason to upgrade.
So you WILL get the new Microsoft Windows Operating system almost immediately. You WILL NOT get the new Microsoft Windows applications suite until 2010. Not that many people care about the latter.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
under
Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
Stumble It!
February 28th, 2009
“Microsoft Office — no matter what number you call it — leads the pack of Office programs by such a margin it is almost ludicrous.”
Microsoft Office is expensive, and saves files in proprietary formats (to ensure vendor lock-in) that are not supported in the long-term (in order to force customers onto the upgrade treadmill). So you pay, and pay, and pay again.
Open Office is free, and saves files in a standard format (ODF) that will be supported for a very long time (of course, Open Office also supports legacy formats such as those found in the Microsoft suite). The quality of Open Office approaches (and in some respects surpasses) that of Microsoft Office. Moreover, Open Office continues to improve with each new version, which isn’t something that can be said of Microsoft offerings these days.
“Take on any new employee and they will probably know how to use Microsoft Office.”
Take on any new employee and they will learn Open Office in a matter of hours (at most).
“Yes, you may need to show them little tricks and foibles of your particular system.”
What they’ll have to master are the changes to the UI. And why has the UI changed? So that Microsoft could give the impression that the software is new, and thus convince the gullible to pay for the same product over and over and over again.
What’s ludicrous, Gareth, is that so many people continue to line up and hand over good money to Microsoft to receive, in return, shoddy, bug-ridden, exploit-prone software. I am surprised that you of all people, given your Welsh heritage, cannot see the distinct absence of any value in such a proposition.
March 2nd, 2009
@Hugh
Many people continue to use MS Office because they are locked into it at their workplace by their employer. Hence why it is so ubiquitous, and why most of us are familiar with it, albeit at wildly varying levels.
In my part of the world, schools routinely teach MS Office to kids because of its ubiquity, and also because all government agencies and state schools are mandated to use it.
And for all of your bluster about how other office suites are better, many complex files created in MS Office often don’t quite look or work the exactly the same when opened in a non-MS office suite.
In my experience, most people are either ignorant and/or lazy about alternatives to MS Office. Many are simply “monkey-see, monkey-do” users who don’t care about the big evil of Microsoft, or are ignorant or even uninterested in anything other than what they know.