Office 2010

[MC]

This is about the Windows version but it might contain a clue or two for
Macheads.

http://snipurl.com/fyvae

Along with Microsoft's announcement Tuesday about the availability of a
preview version of its next-generation mail server, Exchange 2010, the
company gave out a couple of details about that most widely used
software of all ­ Microsoft Office.

After not mentioning the suite for nearly six months, the company has
come out with a general timeframe for the productivity software's
release and tipped its hand as to the naming of the suite‹which will
apparently get the "2010" moniker like today's Exchange product. The
company had previously been referring to the product as "Office 14."

On the heels of this snippet of information, tech sites have dug up the
information that there will be both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the
desktop software. Up to now, the software has only been available in the
32-bit flavor. But with nearly all new Windows PCs shipping with the
64-bit edition of the operating system, the 64-bit version of Office is
a natural. Microsoft staff confirmed that there will be both 32- and
64-bit versions, in a statement sent to PCMag.com.

The pertinent paragraph in Microsoft's statement is this, which
decisively uses the new names:

"Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft
Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter technical
preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first
half of 2010."

The main advantage of moving to 64 bits is the ability to take advantage
of more RAM than the 4-Gbyte limit with 32-bit OSes ­ theoretically up
to a whopping 16.8 million terabytes, though other system limitations
make that much unfeasible at present. But those with huge databases and
spreadsheets, as well as those who run lots of programs simultaneously
would benefit. Because of the memory advantage, most Microsoft server
products already have moved to 64 bits, such as Windows Server 2008.

Possibly more significant for the next version of Office will be the
addition of a Web-based version of the software. The company announced
this at its Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles last
September. One intriguing element of that announcement was that there
would be an ad-supported version of the Web version, which might mean a
free version for consumers. A Web based version also means that it will
be possible to run office on Linux and on the Apple iPhone.

In other Office news, Microsoft said that Mac users can try a 30-day
trial version of Office 2008, for free. The trial version is completely
full-featured, but just time-constrained. Users can register for a trial
key, then buy the full version from Microsoft's Mactopia site, or pick
up a retail copy from an Apple authorized reseller. The Home and Student
Edition of Office 2008 for Mac is priced at $150, the Standard Edition
at $400, and the Special Media Edition is priced at $500, according to
reports.

 

[CyberTaz]

This does not in any reliable way infer anything about Mac Office, which is
handled by a completely separate business unit within MS which has its own
timelines. As suggested in the article itself, it's content is predominantly
speculation & guesswork rather than responsible reporting.

The next version will be available when it becomes available. Teasing
oneself as to when that will be is an exercise in futility for those who
have nothing better to do with their time

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Yes, I am actually a "Word MVP" from the Dark Side, so I am across some of
this stuff.

The 64-bit versions are important in the corporate space, where the desktop
applications are used as "servers" by scripted applications. And for the
spreadsheet warriors that keep pushing the boundaries ‹ anything to avoid
buying another Oracle licence

Office 2008 already has "some" 64-bit code in it. I am sure we will have
"more" in the next version. But I would not like to predict that the entire
suite will be 64-bit.

We recently got the "Trial Version" appeared without any pre-announcement.
That was so they could work the wrinkles out of the server system without
having every man + dog hit the server on day 1...

I am not entirely certain that Word will benefit much from a 64-bit
architecture. The way it currently works, it never loads more than about
"four screenfuls" of a document into memory at a time. This is an
architecture that goes back to the days when 64 kb was a LOT of memory...

Of course, Word would get dramatically faster if it had the whole document
in memory. But how big is a "document"? I have seen them go beyond two
gigabytes. We would become a fairly unpopular guest of the OS if we
reserved four gigs of memory to write a Letter to Mom... So we need to
retain the ability to load less than the whole document on open. And if we
need that, we might as well keep the mechanism we have, we know it works.

The "Web" version, on the other hand, might be a popular item in the Mac
community. I believe (think, hope...) it is being implemented in Java, and
Silverlight; not ActiveX, so it should work for us too

It's purely to keep Google quiet, and won't have a lot of the power features
you get in the desktop versions. But I don't think that will worry people
who just want to get a Word document open in an Internet Café too much

Cheers

This is about the Windows version but it might contain a clue or two for
Macheads.

http://snipurl.com/fyvae

Along with Microsoft's announcement Tuesday about the availability of a
preview version of its next-generation mail server, Exchange 2010, the
company gave out a couple of details about that most widely used
software of all ­ Microsoft Office.

After not mentioning the suite for nearly six months, the company has
come out with a general timeframe for the productivity software's
release and tipped its hand as to the naming of the suite‹which will
apparently get the "2010" moniker like today's Exchange product. The
company had previously been referring to the product as "Office 14."

On the heels of this snippet of information, tech sites have dug up the
information that there will be both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the
desktop software. Up to now, the software has only been available in the
32-bit flavor. But with nearly all new Windows PCs shipping with the
64-bit edition of the operating system, the 64-bit version of Office is
a natural. Microsoft staff confirmed that there will be both 32- and
64-bit versions, in a statement sent to PCMag.com.

The pertinent paragraph in Microsoft's statement is this, which
decisively uses the new names:

"Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft
Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter technical
preview in the third quarter of 2009 and become available in the first
half of 2010."

The main advantage of moving to 64 bits is the ability to take advantage
of more RAM than the 4-Gbyte limit with 32-bit OSes ­ theoretically up
to a whopping 16.8 million terabytes, though other system limitations
make that much unfeasible at present. But those with huge databases and
spreadsheets, as well as those who run lots of programs simultaneously
would benefit. Because of the memory advantage, most Microsoft server
products already have moved to 64 bits, such as Windows Server 2008.

Possibly more significant for the next version of Office will be the
addition of a Web-based version of the software. The company announced
this at its Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles last
September. One intriguing element of that announcement was that there
would be an ad-supported version of the Web version, which might mean a
free version for consumers. A Web based version also means that it will
be possible to run office on Linux and on the Apple iPhone.

In other Office news, Microsoft said that Mac users can try a 30-day
trial version of Office 2008, for free. The trial version is completely
full-featured, but just time-constrained. Users can register for a trial
key, then buy the full version from Microsoft's Mactopia site, or pick
up a retail copy from an Apple authorized reseller. The Home and Student
Edition of Office 2008 for Mac is priced at $150, the Standard Edition
at $400, and the Special Media Edition is priced at $500, according to
reports.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Alex]

Why you don't publish MS Office 2010?

 

[CyberTaz]

It's not the business of anyone here to "publish" any MS product - that's
the job of MS. Especially since it has been indicated that 2010 will be a
Windows version when released I'm not sure why you're even asking in the Mac
Word newsgroup in the first place.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Phillip Jones, C.E.T.]

Besides on MS Normal 4 year cycle it wouldn't even Office for Mac 2010
it would most likely be Office Mac 2012. The last update we had was
2008, and the previous to that 2004, Office-X was basically a port of
Office 42(?) anyway it was word version 6.0.1a , Excel 5.01.a both of
which looked like carbon copy equivalents to Word/Excel95 on the PC. the
menu buttons for Print, copy paste etc looked exactly the same even
down to the grainy awful look .gif images used on PC's of that era.

This is all speculation and reminiscing on my part. MS will put them out

 

[John McGhie]

Short answer: Because it's not finished yet.

Long answer: Everyone in the USA is broke due to the George Bush Financial
Crisis, so no-one has any money to spend on software. So Microsoft will
"probably" delay the product and take advantage of the extra time to include
some features they were otherwise going to drop to hit the deadline.

To the best of my knowledge, Microsoft has not announced a firm on-sale date
for Office 2010/Office 14. The closest I can find is an MSDN blog post last
month that said " Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010,
Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 are scheduled to enter
technical preview in the third quarter of 2009 and release to manufacturing
in the first half of 2010."

But if the Financial Crisis is not over by then, I would expect them to slip
it a year. There is no point in spending a lot of money bringing a product
on the market when few customers can afford to buy it.

Either way, they're not even in beta yet, so there's no way they will
"publish" it.

Cheers

Why you don't publish MS Office 2010?

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[JGT]

Some initial thoughts abut Office 2010 (I currently use Office 2007 on Win7
x64).
1) Somewhere I read that it was NOT recommended to install the x64 version
of office because a lot of the add-ins would not work. I installed the x32
version.
2) I picked the custom installation, keep my 2007 thus I have both 2007 and
2010 on the same system. This allows me to bcounce between the two just to
see the differences.
3) So far I've not been overly excited with 2010, for those of us who find
the ribbon a negative productivity impact brace yourself - it seems to now be
in all of office. However there is the ability to customize the ribbon. Even
with the customization I find it still to be a negative productivity impact.
With the ribbon I find that most often a command is at least two clicks away
and most often numerous clicks away because I cannot remember where the darn
command is. For me I'd go back to the old toolbars in a heart beat. I teach
at a professional level and ask in each of my classes what the attendees
think of the ribbon. So far all but one person thinks it sucks.

 

[Yves Dhondt]

This group is dedicated to the Mac version of Word. It has nothing to do
with Office/Word 2007 or 2010 which are Windows versions.

The 'official' Office 2010 newsgroup can be found at
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/office2010/threads . The
one dedicated to Word 2010 can be found at
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/word/threads

Yves

 

[CyberTaz]

Thanks for your insights, but this is the Mac Office Word group

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[John McGhie]

Well, the fact that we agree strongly with you does not alter the fact that
this forum is about Word on the Mac

Since you are teaching at a professional level, teach your class that there
are things that are "better" about the Ribbon, and that if they engage brain
and use the customisation features of Word 2010 they can personalise Word so
that it is much, much better than it was using toolbars in version 2003.

But you have to customise it to do YOUR job, and since that varies from user
to user, so do the customisations. Spend half an hour in the Help learning
to customise the beastie and it will be a LOT more productive than Word
2003.

A lot of very serious research and some excellent thinking went into the
Ribbon. Deeply hidden within the monstrosity that appeared ion Office 2007
there is a very very good idea. When you get the Ribbon working FOR YOU the
way the original designers intended, it makes such a dramatic improvement to
your productivity that you will NEVER go back!

I say all this because the Ribbon (or at least: a work-alike of it...) is
coming to the Mac in the next version too. We'll get a "Version 3" Ribbon,
which contains the "learnings" from the Office 2007 Ribbon and the Office
2010 Ribbon. Ours will be "The Ribbon the way it always should have been!"

The difference is quite dramatic: I can format a 400-page document from
"clean-sheet" (plain text) to camera-ready (publishing) standard in four
hours using the latest version of the Ribbon. You simply can't DO that with
toolbars.

Hope this helps

Some initial thoughts abut Office 2010 (I currently use Office 2007 on Win7
x64).
1) Somewhere I read that it was NOT recommended to install the x64 version
of office because a lot of the add-ins would not work. I installed the x32
version.
2) I picked the custom installation, keep my 2007 thus I have both 2007 and
2010 on the same system. This allows me to bcounce between the two just to
see the differences.
3) So far I've not been overly excited with 2010, for those of us who find
the ribbon a negative productivity impact brace yourself - it seems to now be
in all of office. However there is the ability to customize the ribbon. Even
with the customization I find it still to be a negative productivity impact.
With the ribbon I find that most often a command is at least two clicks away
and most often numerous clicks away because I cannot remember where the darn
command is. For me I'd go back to the old toolbars in a heart beat. I teach
at a professional level and ask in each of my classes what the attendees
think of the ribbon. So far all but one person thinks it sucks.

--

The email below is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless I ask you to; or unless you intend to pay!

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410 | mailto:[email protected]