I was genuinely more excited by
The prospect of susanalbumparty
An old adage holds that nobody on their deathbed ever said, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office." But more time is exactly what Microsoft is offering in a new ad campaign that appears to tease a January 29 launch date for Office 2013 and its accompanying refresh of Office 365. Few details have been revealed so far other …
This post has been deleted by its author
I hardly count your tiny office as "everyone" but it's nice of you to make these sweeping generalisations on behalf of the 95% of businesses which aren't running Linux.
Although I would suggest that realistically, even Office fans are not going to get excited. Maybe mildly interested... seriously MS a hyped product launch for a business suite?
Funny, my "retail, perpetual-license version" has served me well since ~2000 and is better value than the on-line version, plus I don't have to share my work with a US company.
Since discovering vmplayer would run my old w2k machine better than the old dying hardware ever did, I am happy. Now if they offered office for Linux, minus the ribbon (how hard would that option be?) then I might be willing to pay again...
This post has been deleted by its author
LibreOffice 6 years behind? That sounds about right. And to be fair most of the work these days seems to be improving and extending the importers, making Calc less pants and fixing long standing bugs. And despite tweaking the interface they have so far resisted the lure of the ribbon, let alone TIFKAM.
I read a study once that even reasonably knowledgeable users, use only about 7% of Excels capabilites. I presume that with word it is not much different.
Now unless MS are going to pull out a version of "Tifkam" just for office then I truly have a hard time imagining what miracle they are going to produce. ( I sincerely hope that it is not Tifkam.).
Marketing speak and even the most clever publicity company will never manage to resolve the major problem with Office suites today : that of the "End User".
Regardless of Word, Excel, or the Libre Office equivalants the thing that takes me most time with any documents is the "thinking" part. Will an endless strew of magical icons, widgets, drop down boxes or wizards ever be able to replace or improve my main problem, I doubt it.......
I don't pay for office, my company does that, and as long as I work there I will always have access to the latest versions BUT what advantage does that truly offer me over and above that which I had 10 years ago : almost nothing. I still struggle to create original content, to please my clients and to find the happy medium between too much and not enough and I doubt that any office suite in the world will ever be able to aleviate these problems, which is probably a good thing.....
I wish MS would bring out a "light" version rather than more complete or cloudy versions. I would like something quick and rapid that I can put on a USB key rather than 1.5Gb of DLLS that I will never use. I don't need endless directories or clipart of database connectivity on a daily basis.
MS Office is probably worth more to MS that Windows is and I understand that they need to keep pumping out "new" versions but honestly nothing new has came out for many years. As much as I appreciate the MS Office suite, it is after all an excellent tool, it has become a blind whale lost at sea.
<--- It's OK Microsoft, we are fine with the versions that we have, try bringing something new to the market. Repacking of the old does not make your campers any happier.
"I read a study once that even reasonably knowledgeable users, use only about 7% of Excels capabilites."
I wondered about that. And thought ... nah, probably thought up by OpenOffice, ahem, sorry, LibreOffice fanbois.
The I moved to Germany and discovered that all functions are renamed in different language versions of Excel.
No, seriously.
You think ACCRINTM is a bit long in English? Try it in German: AUFGELZINSF. Still not long enough? Try it in Finnish: KERTYNYT.KORKO.LOPUSSA, Although Russian is probably the most impressively opaque: НАКОПДОХОДПОГАШ.
So, then I realised the 7% was probably an exaggeration. And then I looked at LibreOffice (Calc) and realised it did that too. For some languages (DE, FR) but not others (e.g. RU). FFS I thought.
(I might just top 20%. I have actually written Excel macros (in EN) to allow me to actually use two currencies in one workbook with the right "," and "." placements. FFS. But I was inclined to give up when I realised that Excel workbook linking does not allow you to link files on worksheets unless *all of those files are open*. FFS again. MySQL, Apache, PHP and a Graphing module (perhaps based on Drupal) are faster, cheaper and much, much more powerful. And I'm rewriting my invoicing stuff in 2013 on that system. I hope to heaven I never have to buy another Office product.)
"I read a study once that even reasonably knowledgeable users, use only about 7% of Excels capabilites. I presume that with word it is not much different."
Of that I'm certain. Most Office programs can go much deeper than most expect, this holds even more truth the very moment where you start using VBA based code. For example; the very moment you start to look into adding references to your VBA project the possibilities expand dramatically; there are 'solutions' (libraries) available which provide SNMP services (which I use in an Excel sheet for generating real-time server status overviews), fax services right to gaining access to other Office components or even VBScript regepx if you need them.
However; I think Microsoft is aware and even tries to utilize this to their benefit. Think for example about Office 365; it seems that everywhere you look they'd rather see you pick up an Office 365 subscription than actually buy into the desktop version of Office. Even though Office 365 doesn't provide all the functionality which you get with the desktop versions.
My main concern is that they're going to continue to provide less functionality themselves by leaving it all up to others to fill in the blanks. While still charging the same prices for it of course.
As a MS partner I downloaded the final release of 2013 at the end of October. Why would MS chose to sit on the final release for 3 whole months? I doubt they were carefully considering my comments...
My advice to anyone who is happy with Office 2010 is NOT TO BOTHER upgrading to 2013 unless they like Windows 8. I'm bitterly disapointed as it's turned the Office GUI on my lovely Windows 7 desktop into Windows 8. I hate it. Talk about 50 shades of grey, this literally is just grey. When I have lots of windows open on my monitors the Office 2013 windows blend in to each other and are very hard to find when stacked because the Win8 look is so bland. The edges are bland. I hate bland, I hate Win8's blandness being forced upon me as a Win7 user who swore never to upgrade to Win8. The swines did it to me by stealth! Foul!
So they're trying to generate Apple-sized hype for, er, Office? I think their marketing people need a reality check. I would guess a lot of users won't even get in front of it for some time anyway, my company has only just (grudgingly) rolled out 2010 and Visio, Sharepoint and Project are stuck on the 2003 versions. I accept our IT might be a bit backwards, but we can't be the only ones.
And as previous commenters have mentioned, most users either won't care or will actively protest against any change. At least with our 2003 - 2010 upgrade we get a lot of useful new features like 1M rows in Excel to sweeten it for them.
Office updates and windows for that matter are like ugly movie sequels. The Simpons said it best I think with ‘Transformers of the Caribbean’..
If there ever was such a thing as an expert then I once was one at Excel for trading desks. I probably knew just about everything there was to know about Excel. Trading Desks are one of the few areas where the quants know the product better than 99% of MS employees. We had a hot-line into the development team too and we were more often correct than them about the actual inner workings of Office ‘features’. I think because we actually USED the product everyday! So what do I use now?
Office 2000 with the 2007 compatibility pack!
Why? Because as many have said the product peaked in 2003. For us the RTD (real-time data) feature was key. Whilst Millions of rows were for us, er-- any idea how unmanageably large traders linked spreadsheets were before?! But version 2000 was the last version that forwent activation hassles and it can run on Win7 after a one minute install!
Whether its films or software only big-biz can keep kicking out the same old sh*te and expect us to buy in. MS truly stifled innovation. To finish on a movie note. MS’ lack of imagination reminds me of Clint Eastwood’s: The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1976:
“Don’t keep pissing down my back and tell me its raining.”