RSSGates: New MS Office Coming in 2006
By David Worthington | Published May 11, 2005, 3:14 PM
Tuesday, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates shined some light on the arrival of Office 12. According to Gates, the Longhorn Office release will meet Microsoft's self-imposed development schedule and will ship some time in 2006. Until Tuesday, Microsoft was cautious about committing itself to any timeframe for Office 12.
The announcement confirms the timeline reported by Microsoft Watch, made in November 2004, stating Office 12 is pegged to be released to manufacturing by May 22, 2006 and will have a "street availability" of July 17.
In his speech to developers in Las Vegas, Gates said that the Office System is slated to have improvements made to business intelligence, document sharing features, rights management, scheduling, and workflow management.
"Those are areas where Office has gotten richer and will in the next big release, which is coming sometime next year," Gates told attendees. There is also an array of new Office server products on the horizon. These are rumored to include server versions of Excel, Visio and potentially InfoPath.
Yesterday, Microsoft announced a beta of another vertical office server code-named Maestro, which provides server-based business management scorecard software. The breadth of Office System server development has left the rumor mill whirling about potential Web services.
Redmond may also launch a new charting application as part of Office 12. According to Microsoft Watch, the charting application may draw on Longhorn's Avalon graphics subsystem. Avalon will be back-ported to legacy edition of Windows to make the Office System more widely available.
"Microsoft has long talked about next Office release in the 'Longhorn timeframe,' so 2006 delivery isn't exactly shocking. Still, timing is significant, because Microsoft is trying to move customers to 64-bit and Longhorn," said Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox. "Operating systems don't sell in a vacuum; there need to be applications. Microsoft supported the move from 16-bit to 32-bit by releasing Windows 95 and Office 95 concurrently."
Office 12 is expected to precede Longhorn, which is also slated to arrive some time in 2006.
We're still using Office 2000, because it gets the job done, and does it well. We saw no need to upgrade for XP or 2003, because our clients saw no need. We saw added complexities where Microsoft thought they saw TCO reduction.
The one thing we would like with 2003 right now are those 20 gig pst's you can use, but we've found a workaround that was better with gfi mailarchiver. That one product alone costs less than even one new office upgrade! hahaha! LOL
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Was there any discussion on prices for these upgrades? Since Office 12 will be coming out near the same time as Longhorn I don't really want to spend a small fortune. Longhorn is a definate upgrade but I'll have to wait and seem about the cost of Office 12 vs. the new features.
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"said Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox. "Operating systems don't sell in a vacuum; there need to be applications. Microsoft supported the move from 16-bit to 32-bit by releasing Windows 95 and Office 95 concurrently.""
win95 was an operating environment. it had to have 16 bit dos to run. most of win95 was also 16 bit with a couple of 32 bit aspects. BUTTTT since it was running as an extension of a 16 bit operating system... even that only ran at 16 bit :)
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One of the great things about Office 2006 is that Excel will be able to drop many of its limitations, and for my business, that's seriously good news.
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gawd21 claims he has the Office 12 Beta
I would believe it, but considering I got into the Office 2003 via a link on THIS WEBSITE 2 years ago.
I don't believe him...Plus its to early for a beta, I could believe 8 months but its 12 at this point.
FYI they extended the Office 2003 by aprox 3 months for the fun of it.
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Office 2006 + Windows 4012
Hope they don't trip down the features as they did for Longhorn.
Amit Agarwal
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http://labnol.blogspot.com
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Office suites today are exercises in pointless self-perpetuating upgrades. No one uses one tenth of what the suites offer, yet pay a premium for them.
It's time we sent the vendors a emssage.
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"*yawn*
posted by roj
May 11, 2005 - 5:18 PM
Office suites today are exercises in pointless self-perpetuating upgrades. No one uses one tenth of what the suites offer, yet pay a premium for them.
It's time we sent the vendors a emssage. "
We see why you don't use even a tenth of the Office features. Maybe you should check out spell-check. I can't wait until Office 12 is out. I already have a beta and it's nice.
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If Microsoft can seamlessly integrate Groove Networks into Office, that's something I'd be willing to get. Their software makes collaboration so slick and eliminates a lot of server headaches.
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You have a beta a full year before release? I hadn't heard anything about a beta being out already. Please share your knowledge, observations, and impressions.
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We switched from OpenOffice to Office 2003 for the benefits of the Exchange server. While I do think that Office is bloated and has way too many useless features (to me and my company) - I'm thrilled to see improvements as I'm enjoying discovering Office 2003 for the first time.
I'm amazed at the lack of proper competition to Office. I hope to see MozLightning come out in time to steal some energy =)
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If people are using only 1-tenth of the program, that would be their problem. They bought the software, it would be their problem.
Maybe they should have stuck with buying individual components, or stayed with MSWorks and Outlook Express. Either way, I don't feel sorry for them and neither does MS. They were given bad advice.
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The problem is that once you're on the bandwagon, you can't get off. the service agreements are exorbitant and inexorable.
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No need to check out spell check when I have pre-eminently intelligent users such as yourself to correct my typos (tongue squarely in cheek).
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