What scares you about the forthcoming 2007 Microsoft Office System?
“Change”
You’re darn right. Me too. Change sucks. Especially when it’s in your pockets as you’re trying to go through airport security. [*rim-shot!*]
“[*WHAP!*]”
Sorry. Yeah… I know what you’re talking about. I’m used to using the Office 2003 versions of Word, Excel, Outlook… and I practically live in PowerPoint. A new version coming out causes many to fear… or worse, to just give up and assume they can live with what is already good enough.
That’s what I thought, too.. until I started playing with a beta of the new version. One word: Sweeeet.
But don’t take my word for it…
“I wasn’t going to.”
…um.. yeah. Anyway… I went to the 2007 Microsoft Office preview site today and found a really good video that walks through some of the main improvements… stuff that will have you wishing it were released today. Seriously.. you’ll see that the hoops you have to go through for some formatting options are going to be a thing of the past – which means time better spent creating the content and less time hunting for, trying, and re-trying formatting choices.
Click here to get to the video page.
“Hey! Isn’t that first guy in the video the same guy who famously crashed a Windows 98 computer during a Plug-and-Play demo with Bill Gates?”
Yep.. that’s him. Notice that not only is he still with the company; he’s been promoted. 
So… what else scares you about the 2007 Microsoft Office System?
“The name.”
Yeah… me too. I would have preferred simply “Office 2007”, but I have to trust that the folks who make such decisions had a good reason for it. Now I just have to get used to saying “2007 Microsoft Office”.
Absolutely Full of I.T. 
I thought that guy was in the mysterious hill behind BillG’s office?
😉
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EXCELLENT post!!! This sums it up exactly.
I too wondered… but once I tried it myself I won’t go back (and I’ve already bumped up all my systems to Office 2007 – no guts no glory!).
Two things are needed to make this *rule*:
1) Office should be on the "CTP plan" – we aren’t seeing enough of it, and those of us in the tech beta aren’t getting enough of it. What I have (TR) blows up *a lot* and is *old*. Instead of "das uber" beta plan, we need quick and light CTPs. Office is well-instrumented, so this should help ensure all the data being collected is still usable by a dev team that is a month (more like 2-3) ahead of us.
2) Folks like Jensen Harris, Chris Pratley, (Steven Sinofsky’s blog wil be sorely missed), Craig Pringle (a field person, but world-class), and many others (sorry for the other great folks I missed) should all be given big fat bonuses: their fabulous, unprecedented, and well-done blogs have explained all of this perfectly. We’ve never had access to Microsoft thinking like these folks have provided (and I can say that, being an ex-employee) and the big change to Office 2007 (and Vista too) would never have been so smooth for us without their great work. These folks ARE MS to me – they represent the best of MS, they bring it to those of us who are customers, and I truly believe what they do is the future of MS. This MS is the one I truly like and I know other folks that follow it this way feel the same too.
But there is more work to be done…
1) Get Office on the CTP plan. Get us all something newer!
2) Do a better job of explaining the FrontPage split – it looks like a demise of a fabulous brand I know and love and for peopel walking the aisles of Frys it will look like a demise too. Get us a regular blog writer (I’d do it myself if I was still there!). And get us the post-split builds (via CTP) too!
3) Get Jensen Harris’ stuff onto the websites (it’s too buried in blogs to reach the greater public). Have somebody do it, he needs to stay exactly where is he for the duration – we can’t loose him.
The Office Beta team has done a great job with their website…. an unprecedented amount of info for us to test. However, it needs to be far more frequent – in other words, a CTP.
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Actually Kevin blogged about this a month ago – but I’ve only just got around to looking at the video…
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