Office 2007 Delayed....

For those of you who have an interest, it was announced today that Office 2007 will be delayed until January 2007 with Vista.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9593_22-6053504.html?tag=nl.e540

The delay is really just to make sure they get bang for the marketing buck. Office 2007 is light years ahead of the Vista team on the development cycle - they get to wait for the Vista folks.

Speaking of which, the rumor floating about today that 60% of Vista has to be re-written is false. Thankfully.....

Ummm, I heard both the 2007 and the 60% bits - I also heard that Dell have finally decided to buy Alienware (though that was yesterday).

To be honest, based upon my observations of both IE7 and Longhorn, I'd have been quite happy for them to rewrite 60% of the code. Both are a diabolical mess in my opinion. I have yet to see Office 2007 in action so will reserve passing judgment.

Am I surprised? no, am I relieved? yes. Do I think I have reason to be relieved? no
The one thing I will say though. If they're leaving them until 2007, they should be called Windows/Office 2008 respectively, otherwise they'll date too quickly.

Yes, Dell did buy Alienware. It will be interesting if Dell picks up some of the great design stuff Alienware did.



The latest build of IE7 is significantly better than the previous one. I've been using it now for a few days and have far less issues than I had.

The problem with Vista right now is it is so beta that it is hard to see what is beta mess and what is really going to be a problem come Release Canidate 1. Personally I'm going to wait on it as well. Having been playing with the betas for several weeks now, it is far from complete in so many aspects I can't say what is and what is not bad.

Office 12 has been impressive and extremely reliable. I am dissapointed in the delay on this in all honestly. I understand why they delayed it however - still don't have to like it.

Well, I may just stay with Office Pro 2003, the eye-candy looks distracting, but I may try out Office 2007/08 as a trial, maybe the last office compatible with XP ...
ABout IE7 Beta 2: I downloaded the beta from Microsoft, and I liked it, but then I uninstalled it, and then anything I installed before IE7, the remove option in Add\Remove Programs disappeared, so then I had to reinstall the programs to unintsall them, this included updates as well, I believe... But, I cannot wait until XP SP3 comes out and IE7 for XP...
-My Views-
By the way, when Vista comes out, could HPC:Factor post a guide to get AS 3.8 on Vista and HPC Explorer on Vista Just kidding

I just read about the delay of the Vista release. The LA Times article I read seemed to suggest that Microsoft is in no rush because people are happy with XP. (Gotta admit I like it.)

I am sure that I will do my best on the guides, AS 3.8 on Vista shouldn't be too much of a problem... but HPC Explorer gee, you could be pushing your luck. I'll have to get hold of the beta myself and try it.

wont vista have AS integrated as mobile devices something? we'll have to hack a lot then

Another reporter who is clueless.

If they could get it out today they would. But you are talking about two completely different marketing campains (Office and Vista) if they don't delay until Vista is released.

It is money - not the current build - that is keeping it under wraps.

That's correct. It is called SyncCenter. In my testing, my J720 was able to connect just fine. But as I said somewhere along in this post, Vista is still very beta so that could change.

clint, I've heard that Vista has some fairly high hardware requirements - are there any plans to try and lower these requirements before final release? Right now I have full reason to believe that with my current hardware, I'm grounded to XP.

As well, is there anything groundbreaking in Office 2007? I've had Office 2000 since 2001, and I've never seen a compelling reason to upgrade to XP/2003. I must admit though, that 2000 was a solid build - it's seen me through 3 different systems and 4 different versions of Windows (98SE/ME/2K/XP), and has been rock solid across the board.

I'll be in University by the time both Vista and Office 2007 are released. My question is, would it be worth shelling out for hardware upgrades, a copy of vista, and a copy of office 2007, versus sticking to XP Pro and Office 2000?

Partly true and partly rumor. The big thing for most people will be the video card so all the eye candy can be turned on. But from a pure PC perspective, I'm somewhat skeptical of needing "all new" to run Vista. I have my beta box built on a 2.0GHz/1GB RAM/128MB Video and it works just great.



There are vast changes to Office 2007. One of the key things is all of the file formats being XML based (http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/developers/fileoverview.mspx). This will make using files from different systems much easier to use/share.

They are also changing up the packaging of Office 2007 (http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/suites.mspx).

The hype around Office "12" has been all the eye candy. The great thing about it is that it isn't just there to look pretty. The way everything is laid out, it substantially improves the useability.



That's impossible for me to answer. It is totally going to depend on if the feature set(s) meet your needs.

Just a side bar here for everyone reading - please don't ask me about particular functionality or features of Office 2007 or Vista. I am under NDA so what I can share is pretty much what is in this post.

Thanks clint.

Looks like the requirements for Vista have changed since I last saw them. Looks like my system might be able to squeeze by with Vista - just no eye candy.

Well, in fairness, the article was just about the release of the new OS version; Office 2007 was not discussed IIRC.

It will all depend on what the final minimum requirements turn out to be. Remember, we are talking about something that is over 9 months away - things will change.

The point that Microsoft are going to be looking for though will be "why would you want to run it in a slower machine". This is going to appeal to OEM's. The fact of the matter is that unless Microsoft write and bundle the driver, for anything that is below a 3GHz CPU generation, you're unlikely to find drivers - or substantial ones. This will seriously affect the compatibility of the platform and its operation. In order to fully exploit the NT6 kernel improvments you will need hardware capable of supporting it for example DEP, multi-core, 64-bit (why they are relasing a 32-bit version is beyond me), HD, DVI etc.

I agree with the poster over Office 2000 reliability. I got it the month that it RTM'd and was using it up until February this year when I finally decided to break seal the 2003 Pro that I had lying about. Aside from making me click more, it has done nothing that 2000 can't do.