Print - Microsoft Releases Office 2007 to Manufacturing

At 9:00 a.m. EST this morning, Microsoft announced that its long-awaited Office 2007 System was complete, setting the stage for a late November 2006 business rollout and a wider consumer launch in January. Microsoft is touting Office 2007--in tandem with upcoming products such as Windows Vista and Exchange Server 2007--as the linchpin of a new round in corporate spending.

"We've crossed the development finish line, and the team deserves to celebrate," said Microsoft president Jeff Raikes, who oversees the company's business division. "The 2007 Microsoft Office System RTM completes the most significant improvements to the products in more than a decade. It's rewarding to be able to send this release off to our customers and help them take the next big leap forward in productivity."

Microsoft previously announced its Office Technology Guarantee program, which lets customers who purchase new PCs between October 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007, with Office 2003 preloaded receive free or inexpensive upgrades to similar Office 2007 product versions. Details about these so-called upgrades are available through PC makers.

This week, I'll post a review and screenshot gallery of the final version of Office 2007 on the SuperSite for Windows.
http://www.winsupersite.com

After a test run with both Vista Ultimate and all of the Office 2007 products at the home user level, I was quite impressed with the products (Office 2007 that is) and found the new touches to be logical, friendly, and also nice to look at. The only problem I have with this is the fact that these applications are still integral to the whole Windows system where security levels are concerned and with the IE browser in general. Other than this and my complete dislike and disappointment with Windows Vista, I think Office 2007 is solid.

And all the businesses still using the perfectly capable Office 2000 yawn and go about their day...

Ya too bad for them....support has already ended for Office 2000 - that means no more security updates and bug fixes. They should really get out of the stone ages, being 3 product revisions behind. Even a Mac user should know enough to be running 10.3.9 or later.

"And all the businesses still using the perfectly capable Office 2000 yawn and go about their day..." Me thinks someone has not tried Office 2007...

Macs arn't getting 2007 yet, so yeah, he hasn't tried it. Anywho, was that a promotion for the 6 year old office 2000, Captain Contradiction?

"And all the businesses still using the perfectly capable Office 2000 yawn and go about their day." Aren't you one of the people that always is complaining that XP is in the stone age because they haven't updated it since 2001, but here you advocate that 2000 is just fine? I don't get it. Oh yeah, I forgot. This is MS. You have to find something to complain about, even if it contradicts exactly what you espouse. ---- Refreshes: 5

My workplace leapfrogs though Office revisions. We're currently running mostly Office XP(2002), with a few OEM copies of 2003 that came with some hardware purchases. Office XP(2002) replaced our Office 97 installs (and some OEM copies of Office 2000) I'm almost certain we'll be rolling out Office 2007, once the Lords of Excel at the corporate office find something they like about it. The only really complicated items we use at our site are the document review and password protection... things that have been in Office since 97... but corporations like Office and think the latest version is where its at. I use Word and Excel heavily as part of the documentation aspects of system administration (v2002 on XP and 2004 on OSX). I could care less about 2007 unless there's a 2007-only widget that gets used in a corporate document that I have choice but to run 2007 in order to open/work-with their files. Otherwise, I'm fine with what I'm running.

"I use Word and Excel heavily as part of the documentation aspects of system administration (v2002 on XP and 2004 on OSX). I could care less about 2007 unless there's a 2007-only widget that gets used in a corporate document that I have choice but to run 2007 in order to open/work-with their files. Otherwise, I'm fine with what I'm running." 2007 is not about widgets and stapled in BS with flashy lights and transitions. Excel 2007 moves your spreadsheet size from 256x64K to 64Kx1M that is reason enough to upgrade for any business. Where I work there are soil analysis sheets that have to be spread across 4 documents because 256 simply isn't wide enough. It uses some rather nasty VB to get the job done and looks barely safe much less elegant. XAML is cleaner and smaller on top of that and formatting is finally elegant. Office 2007 is truly new in every way. Anyone who maintains that 2003 is just as good can easily be classified into a single group, someone who hasn't used 2007.

"someone who hasn't used 2007." I'll be the first to admit that I haven't tested Office 2007 yet. I've only tested Vista's Beta and RC builds and (IE7beta-on-XP before that). Those alone took the lion's share of my spare "testing" time. Does anyone know if Office 2007 comes with optional gadgets for Vista's sidebar?

Not sure about that one. I think there's an Office Live gadget though. Has anybody tried Vista RCx w/ Office 2007 TR2 on Virtual PC 2007?? How's that run? Vista RC1 is brutally slow on Virtual PC 2004, but usable. On a Core [1] Duo 1.66GHz notebook with 2GB of RAM (1GB designated to the virtual machine) running Virtual PC 2004, it runs about the same as being "physically" installed on my "Minibox" VIA C3 1GHz w/ 512MB Mini-ITX system. Beta 2 is completely unusable in Virtual PC 2004 though. Since Vista doesn't support ISA sound cards, and Virtual PC 2004's sound is an emulated SB16, there is no sound support in that version. Hopefully they've improved the device emulation in Virtual PC 2007.

Wouldn't say I'm the biggest user of Office, but I'm loving some of the styling that you can do in Word. Just make sure you specify whats a title,header and body etc, pick a style and whammo! Really modern professional looking document. People in the office have been commenting.

I had nothing but trouble with Vista after about 10 days and I tried to really push its buttons on a perfectly capable machine. I have to admit that besides that, I really don't like it and something bothers me about it that I can not put my finger on...it just feels like a cold system....but Office 2007 is another story.....now this is a solid product and even though I still don't care for the security aspects, I have to admit that the office system is among the best available software I have seen in a while.