SizzlaBlog

With the release of Microsoft Office 2008, its seems the blogosphere has been sent into a frenzy with reports of excited customers – why??

As you may already no, i’m not Mr Gate’s biggest fan, however I do have to applaud his Office suite – its simple and easy to use. That is Office 2003 and not the 2007 version. Like Vista the new release of Office didn’t get the approval that Bill thought it should receive. The reason (this stands for Vista aswell) is that they tried to simplify something by over complicating an issue. Case and point – the ribbon interface!

The second reason why Microsoft seem to fail with new product launches is the need to have multiple versions of the product (Adobe are also guilty with their CS3 suite) – why not do what Apple have in the past (Leopord) and release a reasonably priced version that does everything. The new Office suite ranges from £99 (Student & Home) to a whopping £499 for the full edition. You could buy a Mac Mini for that price and get a 60 day trial of iWork. Is there any wonder why there is so much piracy for Windows software on Torrents and News Groups.

The third reason why I won’t buy a new version of Office for Mac is Boot Camp. I use iWork while on my Mac and have the ability to save to Office formats, and if for any reason I wish to use an Office specific function then i’ll simply switch to my Windows partition and use Office 2003 there.

The fourth reason why I won’t upgrade is the issue of formats. Try opening an Office 2007 file with Office 2003 – enough said. However, my stubborness will be my own downfall as institutions will be forced into upgrading as they have so much invested in the Microsoft platform. My choice to not upgrade will only leave me unable to open documents in the future. A fact that we should all take seriously. Imagine in as little as 5 years time not being able to open your Univeristy dissertation because your OS no longer supports the format it was created in. For this reason, I always save work in multiple formats in order to keep all bases covered.

I feel the future is bleak for desktop only apps such as the Office suite. The efforts of Google, Adobe and Yahoo et al, have paved away for rich internet applications that mean we are no longer tied into a single platform, application or format as well as the ability to view and edit files from any machine with a browser and internet connection. It also aids collaboration between co-workers.