Ms claimed a go on to conserve and alter Workplace records within the file format on the adversary's

A whole new approach by Master of science to permit it is Office 2007 software package to conserve along with alter data inside a competing structure will probably confront the probe from the Eu Commission payment.
The Percentage reported missed Wed that it's going to look into if Microsoft's choice to include support for your Open up Document Data format to Business office can lead to increased purchaser preference.

Windows switch, also reported Sunday, is seen as any concession in order to regulators concerned about rivalry as well as buyers, primarily nations, worried about item lock-in.

"The Fee may research if thez declared help connected with Amenable Record Format in Office brings about improved interoperability and lets consumers to process in addition to return the docs with the software program product or service in their choice,Inch the particular payment explained inside of a record revealed by Dow Johnson.

Some sort of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 product supervisor instructed CNET Media.world wide web in Sunday the corporation intends to explore it is proceed while using Percentage. "We include continuous talk using the EC, so we will certainly completely use a discussion together regarding these kind of actions and obtain whatsoever reviews they will build that," explained Mary Robertson, general manager with Interoperability and also Requirements from Microsoft.

Starting off sometime in the 1st half of next year, Office 2007 will certainly aid ODF as being a local formatting alongside Microsoft's private Office environment Available XML. Customers are able to find one and the other as the go into default arrangement.

For roughly couple of years, Master of science has created out there linguists of which make it possible for Workplace work with ODF papers. This company intentions to continue to do that will intended for more mature versions regarding Office. Assist for ODF, along with the Lightweight Papers Structure and also the XML Papers Standards, will be built into the subsequent model involving Office, rule referred to as Business office 15.

Many Macintosh personal computer owners continue to purchase Office environment

Apple could be the poster child with regard to demonstrating the industry tips on how to vie efficiently having Microsoft office 2007, although the organization is just not free from Redmond's very long adjustable rate mortgage yet.

Irrespective of wasting several years, in addition to huge amounts of money within investigation as well as growth, on its own collection of output application, Seventy seven per cent with Macintosh users keep with Microsoft Office, in accordance with a TechFlash review.

I enjoy the Mac, but I weren't able to make use of it devoid of Place of work. On this, I'm sure I am not alone, which will have to supply Apple temporarily halt whenever them celebrates their mounting Apple pc market share.

Perhaps that's why Apple inc is usually launching a SharePoint-esque fake developed all around it is Webpages along with Numbers applications, using Milliseconds head-on within file venture.

The strategies won't work. Until finally Apple mackintosh really starts off receiving market share using its iWork suite, it will not make any difference if the 5-6 prospects who seem to essentially work with it might work together together.

Not any, to absolve Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 latent stranglehold about its Apple computer share of the market, Apple mackintosh must complete one of two issues vis-a-vis workplace work productivity: move disruptive which has a Web-based providing the way that Yahoo has, or perhaps make investments sincerely throughout OpenOffice.org making it a new worthwhile, rock-solid venture opponent in order to Microsoft Office. The initial path results in Off-road Watch (Google). The other? For you to Menlo Recreation area (Sunshine).

No matter that direction Apple company company will take, sometime, it should handle Microsoft Office. Indeed, individuals may possibly just perform Place of work in the personal product or by means of Bootcamp, nevertheless that really only increases the requirement of Milliseconds.

Office 2007 Ribbon interface can save time

Microsoft claims that Office 2007 ribbon interface saves time by putting the features people use most often closer at hand. For those of us who spent years learning where those functions were in previous versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the changes aren't the productivity boosters Microsoft envisioned.

I've done more than my share of rummaging around the ribbon in Office 2007 trying to find a particular command, and I've even used Microsoft's user-interface guides to hunt down the feature I needed. Now Microsoft Office Labs has developed the free Search Commands add-on for Office 2007 downlaod that lets you type in a command and access it in an instant.

After you download and install the add-on, the Search Commands tab is added to the ribbon. Click it (or press the Windows key and Y) and type the name of the command you need.

For example, the other day I was looking for the Reveal Formatting option in Word 2007. I eventually found it under the Display tab in Word Options (off the Office button menu). It would've been much faster for me to simply open Search Commands, type "reveal formatting," and enter the number that appears next to that option ("5" in this case).

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 only other offering to date is the Community Clips add-on designed to facilitate finding and sharing how-to videos relating to Office 2007. The site describes three other projects: one that creates a wiki on a SharePoint server, one that is intended to improve the Tablet PC pen interface, and one designed to serve as a marketplace for freelancers.

Note that all of the projects are prototypes, and Microsoft collects "usage metrics" in an attempt to enhance them, though you can opt out of sending any data to the company. I don't know about the other Office Labs projects, but Search Commands is an add-on I expect will save me quite a bit of time by slicing the ribbon to ribbons.

Company touts a patent office ruling as a "very material step" forward in its claim against Microsoft regarding XML features in Office

The patent office, I4i said, has "confirmed the patentability of all claims" of I4i's patent No. 5,787,449, which was granted in 1998. The patent office had been re-examining that patent as Microsoft office 2007 fought I4i's claims regarding XML features in Office.

"This is a very material step in our litigation against Microsoft. Put simply: i4i's patent is clearly and unequivocally valid. Even though Microsoft attacked i4i's patent claims with its full arsenal, the Patent Office agreed with i4i and confirmed the validity of our...patent," Loudon Owen, chairman of i4i, said in a statement Tuesday.

Microsoft vowed to stay resilient, indicating that there may be more legal maneuvering yet to come.

"We are disappointed, but there still remain important matters of patent law at stake, and we are considering our options to get them addressed, including a petition to the Supreme Court," Kevin Kutz, director of public affairs for Microsoft, said in a statement.

Things have not been going Microsoft's way in this patent dispute. In January, a court injunction went into effect that forbade Microsoft from selling certain versions of its Office software suite. Recent versions of Microsoft Word, a major element of Office, contain a custom XML feature that a U.S. District Court in Texas last year found to infringe on I4i's patent. That court also determined that Microsoft must pay $200 million to Toronto-based I4i.

In April, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 lost a bid for a review by a full appeals court.

"i4i's...patented invention infuses life into the use of Extensible Mark Up Language (XML) and dramatically enhances the ability to structure what was previously unstructured data," Owen said in I4i's statement. "As the magnitude of data grows exponentially, this is a critical technological bridge to controlling and managing this sprawling octopus of data and converting it into useful information."

Microsoft has decided to offer both businesses and consumers the option of running dPowerPoint from within a Web browser

As first reported by CNET News last week, Microsoft will use its Professional Developer Conference here to show off browser-based versions of its Office programs.

In an interview, Microsoft Office 2007 Business Division President Stephen Elop said that the browser-based editing capabilities are being developed in conjunction with the next version of Office, known as Office 14. Microsoft won't say when that version will arrive, but Elop said that a technology preview of the browser-based products will come later this year and that a beta version will be released in 2009.

Microsoft will offer browser-based Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in two ways. For consumers, they will be offered via Microsoft's Office Live Web site, while businesses will be able to offer browser-based Office capabilities through Microsoft's SharePoint Server product.

The company has been pushed into this arena by Google, which has been offering its free Google Apps programs for some time. In competing with Google, Microsoft is touting the ability to use Microsoft's familiar user interface, as well as the fact that all of the document's characteristics are preserved.

"If you go into some competitive products right now and take a Word document in and then spit it out afterword, it's unrecognizable," Elop said. "You lose a lot of fidelity."

Elop said that not all of the editing capabilities of the desktop products are in the browser versions. "The editing we are characterizing as lightweight editing," he said.

Although Google Apps has seen most of its popularity among consumers, it has started to attract attention from corporate customers. Google Apps got a strong look from Procter & Gamble, which only decided to stick with Office after a strong push from Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007. Part of that pitch, Elop said, included Microsoft offering details on its plans for the Web-based versions of the Office programs.

"This was part of the conversation, absolutely," Elop said. "We have been sharing with customers under varying circumstances to a greater or lesser extent."

Although he didn't name names, Elop said Microsoft has found itself in a competitive situation with Google in other business accounts as well.

Microsoft to release Mac OS X Office

Microsoft announced it will release a version of Office 2007 download for Mac OS X in the fall, marking the first truly significant software developer to back Apple's next-generation operating system.

Analysts had warned that without a version of Office, or a similar productivity suite, running natively under Mac OS X, Apple would face problems getting businesses to switch to the new operating system.
"This is a very significant announcement for Apple," Gartner analyst Chris LeTocq said. "Frankly, this is the endorsement they needed."

Until Wednesday's announcement at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Microsoft refused to reveal a timetable for a Mac OS X version of Office, with some analysts speculating the company would not deliver the product until early 2002.

Mary Becker, group product manager of Microsoft's Macintosh business unit, explained the change in the company's position with regard to Office for Mac OS X.

Becker said that when Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 unveiled Mac Office 2001 in July, "a lot of people in the industry were saying, 'What does OS X really look like? What does it really mean to the industry?' There was a lot of uncertainty."

But much has changed since the summer. "The difference between then and now is that Apple is further along" with OS X, Becker said. "If you take a train analoge, we didn't know where we were headed. We do now, and Microsoft's on the train."

'The Office' creator deepens Microsoft ties

Microsoft office 2007 is hoping the creator of Ugly Betty can make MSN a little more beautiful.

The software maker announced Tuesday that Ben Silverman's Reveille will create two more Internet video shows for its MSN Video site. One, called "Driving School," is being sponsored by Volvo and will feature cast members from The Office. The other, dubbed "This is the Life," is a travel and leisure show being sponsored by Chivas.

Microsoft first announced its deal with Reveille at last year's ad summit. Reveille has so far delivered two programs through MSN: The Big Debate and a Kraft-sponsored cooking show, Chef to the Rescue.

Although it faces competition from Google and OpenOffice--whose offerings are free--Microsoft continues to see strong sales in the unit that includes Office. The Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 Business Division, largely on the strength of Office, grew its revenue in the most recently reported quarter to $4.8 billion, up from $3.6 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.

Operating income grew to $3.4 billion from $2.4 billion a year earlier.
Capossela did say that it doesn't see a distinction between desktop productivity software and Web-based productivity software.

"We're very happy to be the leading vendor in the space and we want to continue to be the leading vendor in the space," he said. "We look at everything from ad-funded software to Web-based software to servers. Long term the way we differentiate from Google, it's the combination of all three: client, servers and services that is the winning strategy."

Microsoft Office MetaFile Filter update may not work in some cases

A recent Microsoft Tech Support document covers the following symptom: When you open a document in one of the Microsoft office 2007 Macintosh Edition programs, the pictures in the document do not appear correctly but instead contain missing or broken lines or details." It offers the same solution as for the TIFF problem reported here last time: get the updated MetaFile Filter. However, John Chen claims that the updated Filter did not fix this problem for him.

Similarly, Ted Burger writes: "The Office 98 MetaFile update does not fix everything. I am having trouble opening some Word documents that have a graphic for the logo. Word opens the document and displays the text, but when it attempts to convert the EMF logo, the entire Mac freezes. Force Quit does not work."

"Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 Update is a combined updater that includes all previously released updates for Office v. X. Installing this update on any previously released version of Office v. X will bring Office up to date and corrects problems that some users had installing previous updates."

The included updates are: Office v. X, Service Release 1 which provides new functionality and a host of other enhancements to Office v.X; Office v. X 10.1.1 Update which tackles some security vulenrabilities; Entourage X Hotmail Update which allows users to connect to MSN Hotmail servers; and Network Security Update which provides more secure operation of Office in connected environements.

Microsoft hands over Office XML specs to Ecma

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 handed over a 2,000-page draft specification to Ecma International which, if all goes to plan, will form the basis of standardized Office document formats.

The transfer took place on Thursday in Brussels, Belgium at the initial meeting of the Office Open XML Ecma technical committee, called Ecma TC145. The committee is tasked with taking the XML-based document formats used in the forthcoming Office 12 product and creating an internationally recognized standard.

Submitters were Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, NextPage, Statoil, and Toshiba.

At the meeting, Jean Paoli, senior director of XML Architecture for Microsoft and co-creator of the XML standard, and Isabelle Valet-Harper, Microsoft's senior program manager for standards strategy, were appointed co-chairs of the committee. Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture for the British Library, was appointed vice chair.

The draft specification is available for download. The committee intends to complete its work in about a year and submit Office 2007 download to ISO for standardization. Office 12 is due by the end of next year.

Microsoft is working to finalize the plan in the next version of Office software

Many of the features once planned as part of Microsoft's .Net My Services initiative--a consumer-focused Web services strategy--may now find their way into Office, sources said.

Microsoft office 2007 has not set a release date for the next version of the business software, which has been referred to internally as Office.Net or Next Generation Office. Microsoft shipped Office XP, the current version of the software package, one year ago this month. New versions typically follow the current release by 18 to 24 months.

News of the next version comes as rival Sun Microsystems announces a new version of its StarOffice package, which is an alternative to Microsoft Office. Sun on Tuesday said it will begin selling the software May 21, priced at $75.95.

Among companies, "what's most interesting is the sudden increase in interest in StarOffice," said Gartner analyst David Smith. "We're not seeing much deployment of it, but (there is) tremendous interest, and companies (are) setting up testing labs."

Though StarOffice interest may be on the rise, Microsoft still controls more than 95 percent of the desktop business software market, according to Gartner.

Microsoft isn't standing still. For the next version of Office, the company is considering an optional subscription version tied to Web services based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). Those services, which could include some of the online calendaring and collaboration features envisioned for .Net My Services, would also be available separately for Office copies sold at retail or on new PCs, sources said.

.Net My Services, announced more than a year ago, was originally envisioned as a "digital safe-deposit box" for hosting and delivering personal information while providing an array of services, ranging from commerce to communications, in partnership with Web retailers such as eBay.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 had hoped that consumers would pay fees that would cover the bulk of the expense to run these one-stop services, which would manage passwords, calendars and other personal information.

Instead, the plan has been the source of continual confusion among potential customers, has encountered a series of problems with its underlying technology, and has faced internal frustration that sources say even led to its top executive being reassigned.

In court last week testifying as part of Microsoft's antitrust trial, Jim Allchin, the company's senior vice president responsible for Windows, described .Net My Services as being "in a little bit of disarray."
Microsoft has said it plans to retool .Net My Services for corporate customers, so that they can more easily share information over local area networks (LANs).

Now, Microsoft appears to be linking .Net My Services to Office--its cash cow--in the hope of garnering more interest in paid services. That plan would put access to Microsoft's Web services within the reach of millions of Office users. This week, Microsoft said that customers had purchased the right to install 60 million copies of Office XP.

One new Web service being considered by Microsoft would provide customers with Web-based e-mail capable of connecting to multiple services and linking to Outlook. Another service would take a similar approach to calendaring and online collaboration. The service would, for instance, allow online calendars to be updated and linked to a wireless handheld. Another service would provide online data storage for documents.

Office 2010: What's changed since beta

Several members of Microsoft's Office team dropped by CNET on Tuesday to deliver the final version of Office 2007 and talk about the changes that the company made since the beta test version.

To be clear, not a whole lot has changed in the version that was finalized earlier this month from the public beta version that has been downloaded some 7.5 million times. The final version of Office 2010, in its many flavors, will be made available to businesses on May 12 and hit store shelves for consumers in June.

Perhaps the most notable shift since beta is the fact that Outlook's new conversation view is no longer turned on by default.

"It clearly works, in some cases," said Microsoft group product manager Chris Bryant. "It clearly doesn't work for everyone. We'll let those folks who want the conversation view find it and turn it on."

My 2 cents is that it is a feature worth trying, at a minimum. A few pet peeves aside, I find this to be one of the most useful improvements in the new Outlook.

One other change Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 made was in the nomenclature of its file menu, changing the "share" option to "save and send."

"People didn't understand what 'share' meant," Bryant said.

That follows on the decision to restore the file menu itself, which had been replaced with an Office logo in the initial test versions of 2010.
I did get a clarification on co-authoring that surprised me, though Microsoft says it is not new. I knew that Word only allows one person to be working in any given paragraph at a time, even when collaborating. What I didn't realize is that the co-authoring features in Word and PowerPoint are only in the desktop applications, not in the browser-based Office Web Apps that are due out in June.

That strikes me as a blow to Microsoft's effort to take on some of the collaboration scenarios that are some of the most popular uses of Google Docs.

As is often the case with beta software, one must uninstall the beta and then reinstall the final version of Office 2010. But what I appreciated was the fact that a lot of data and settings are preserved. For example, I was still able to pull up the most recent documents and see the Word files I was working on using the beta. Likewise, my e-mail in Outlook picked up right where I left off, remembering my settings, password, etc.

For those wondering about those browser-based Web Apps, consumers should be able to get their hands on it about the same time in June, as Office hits store shelves. Businesses can run the Web apps today by installing the new SharePoint on their servers, while those looking to have Microsoft host an enterprise version of the Web Apps will have to wait until the SharePoint Online service moves to the 2010 version later this year.

Microsoft doesn't make complete source code available

He move would greatly expand the availability of the company's source code to businesses, governments and schools. Microsoft office 2007 doesn't make complete source code available. It withholds source code related to code that's licensed from third-party companies, certain cryptographic code, and intellectual property that Microsoft determines gives it a competitive advantage, said Matusow.

The program isn't a full open-source offering; select customers can view the code but they cannot change it or share it with others. Those customers can also examine Microsoft security documentation the company doesn't otherwise share, visit Microsoft's headquarters, speak with Microsoft developers and perform their own tests on the code. Microsoft does allow modification and redistribution of specific products, such as its ASP.Net development software and Windows CE operating system, under a separate program.

Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems, one of Microsoft's chief rivals and a key proponent of open source, said Microsoft's shared-source program can't replace a full open-source approach.

"Shared source isn't about collaborating and inventing and supporting software like open source," Phipps said. "It's code that Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 thinks isn't worth stealing, so you can look at it but you can't create derivative works."

Microsoft says 2,000 organizations are eligible to take advantage of the shared-source program. Companies must have 1,500 seats of Windows under an enterprise licensing agreement to qualify for the program. An offshoot of the shared-source program, called the Government Security Program, makes source code available to 59 governments around the world, and to the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Community, Matusow said.

The expansion of the program underscores Microsoft's efforts to embrace open-source concepts that underlie the popular Linux operating system, Apache Web server software and MySQL database, and that allow source code to be viewed, modified and redistributed by developers large and small. By contrast, Microsoft has traditionally retained tight control over its source code. But growing popularity of open-source software, especially among government agencies, has forced Microsoft to open its software vault, if only a bit.

AOL patents could help Microsoft battle Google Maps

Microsoft bought AOL's patents in a deal valued at $1.056 billion and may have just accelerated a Web map war with Google.

In a statement, AOL said it will sell more than 800 of its patents and patent applications to Microsoft office 2007. The deal includes shares of an undisclosed subsidiary so AOL can take a loss for tax purposes.

The deal is good for both parties and the patent auction was apparently competitive, according to Microsoft.

Why would these patents be so hot? There's a Web mapping war going on. Let's connect a few dots:

Wikipedia, Foursquare and Apple ditched Google Maps for OpenStreetMap, an open competitor to Google on mapping technology.

Mapquest is a backer of the OpenStreetMap initiative and has provided tilesets, APIs and other tools.

239 patents are attributed to Mapquest at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Rest assured some of those will be transferred to Microsoft in the AOL patent deal.

The AOL sale highlights the power of intellectual property as technology companies duke it out.

AOL just happened to buy Mapquest in 1999 for $1.1 billion and could claim a tax loss on that deal. AllThingsD noted that Netscape was the subsidiary Microsoft bought.

As mobile location-based services ramp mapping is vital. Google Maps is intertwined with corporate applications and various mashups too. Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 has powerful mapping tools too.

Add it up and its a mapping war that pits Google Maps against the OpenStreetMap/Mapquest/Microsoft trio. On March 1, Mapquest said on its developer blog:

Is 2012 the year of Open mapping? We've been ecstatic to see the energy around OpenStreetMap, and have noticed several applications recently convert to using MapQuest-OSM tiles and other companies like foursquare embrace OpenStreetMap as a foundation of their business.

Now it has Mapquest intellectual property in the fold, it will have the tools to either nudge out Google Maps or at the very least sue.

Microsoft's Internet service provider Fasthosts has its violation of

Earlier this week, the U.K.-based ISP and hosting company started selling a version of Microsoft Office which it advertised as being "streamed to your PC". However, unlike true hosted software, or software as a service (SaaS), it requires the user to download software to their client PC.

"Fasthosts' Microsoft office 2007 product uses the SaaS model in that it is delivered and managed via the Internet," explained Mark Jeffries, Fasthosts' chief technology officer, on Thursday. Speaking with CNET News.com sister site ZDNet UK via e-mail, Jeffries said that a "full version Microsoft Office, identical to the boxed product, is downloaded using a streaming service and saved locally on a user's PC."

"After one initial download, further small downloads are made for additional features and updates. When functions are used for the first time, features are seamlessly streamed in the background. The software is validated when connected to the Internet," explained Jeffries.

Jeffries claimed that Fasthosts' version of Office was the result of a partnership "with Microsoft and established market-leading experts in the field of software streaming." However, Microsoft has disagreed with this claim.

"Fasthosts is a valued Microsoft partner who we have a great relationship with," said Michala Wardell, head of antipiracy at Microsoft UK, on Friday. "At present, streaming Microsoft products like office 2007 download  via the Web infringes our license regulations. Fasthosts has been informed of this and we are currently working with them to rectify this situation."

Fasthosts has not, as yet, responded to Microsoft's comments on the issue.
While Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 has been clear about its plans to start offering some of its products on the hosted model, it has not officially launched any business productivity products along those lines. The hosted model involves software running from a provider's servers and being accessed through a browser, rather than being installed on the user's machine.

Generally run on a subscription basis, the advantages of the hosted model for the user include not having to pay for the software upfront, not needing as much processing power on the client side, and being able to benefit from updates being applied on the provider's servers rather than on the client machine. The disadvantages include a reliance on continuous
Internet connectivity and the fact that the software can end up costing more than a boxed version if used over a sufficient length of time.

Google talks about Microsoft's director of the Office

Microsoft will bow to reality with Office 2007, adding browser-based versions of Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote. But, in an interview this week, the head of Microsoft's Business Division says that there is still plenty of life in the full version.

"At the highest level, what we're able to put forward to our customers is not just the best productivity experience, but one that spans the PC, the browser environment, the Web environment, services, and so forth, and the mobile device," Elop said. "So, it's the best productivity experience across the PC, the mobile phone, and the browser."

At its worldwide Partner Conference on Monday, Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 will give people a feel for how this works and is expected to start broader testing of the first piece--the desktop applications.

As for Google, Elop said that most businesses still think of Google as a search company or are just kicking the tires on Google Docs. He shrugged off the fact that Google this week brought the products out of beta.

"I've heard that the word was dropped," Elop said. "I didn't notice that anything else had changed. So I don't know if the software suddenly got better, or they just changed the name."

He also said it is too soon to have an opinion on Google's just-announced Chrome OS.

"We haven't seen it," he said. "We don't know anything other than what has been written in a blog."

In a wide-ranging interview, Elop shared more views on Google as well as his perspectives on Office, business software, and the broader economy.

The office suite is a relic of an old age

Boy Genius Report has posted screenshots of the new Microsoft Office 11 for Mac, suggesting that it looks "absolutely delicious."
Do you care?

I don't mean that in any anti-Microsoft fashion. I'm just asking, "Do you still care about an office productivity suite?" I mean, in the traditional sense of that product category?

I don't, and I'm not exactly sure when my concern for Microsoft Office (or OpenOffice, for that matter) dissipated. At some point in the last few years, e-mail became my office productivity suite, with a sip here and there of Google Docs. I just don't need Office 2007  anymore. Not most of the time, anyway.

Hence, when I got my new laptop, I didn't bother getting a copy of Office, preferring instead to install OpenOffice for those odd moments when I have to review a spreadsheet. One that isn't sent to me as a Google Doc, that is.

While I'm sure I'm not alone in this, it's no secret that Microsoft continues to print billions of dollars in profits each quarter from its Office business. But I wonder how sustainable that business is.

At some point consumers are going to notice they don't use Office very often. Perhaps never. (Yes, CNET points to people who "plan race course tracks in OneNote [and] people designing needlework in Excel," but these are the exceptions, not the rule.)

And at some point, CIOs are going to realize that the vast majority of their employees don't spend any time mucking around with pivot tables or drafting documents. At most, people use Outlook, and buying an entire Office license to get e-mail feels like overkill.

We're the e-mail generation, but not necessarily Outlook's progeny. We're the SharePoint crowd, but one that would probably prefer to spend time in Facebook. Give us Twitter and IM, and we can forgo drafting a letter for weeks.

Demographics are shifting away from Office-like communication, it feels to me, and Microsoft Office Ulitmate 2007 has been slow to keep up. So, too, has its open-source competition, with OpenOffice.org apparently hiding from Microsoft technology like Bing rather than competing by changing the rules of the game.

Office is too slow--or, rather, how we communicate with it is. It's a wonderful product for its day and age, but that time appears to be fading.

Creative Commons comes to Microsoft Office

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that has written licenses that allow content creators to share information while retaining some rights.

Currently, some Web-based tools let people associate a Creative Commons license with information. But Microsoft is the first vendor to embed a license-selection option inside its applications, said Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Creative Commons and a Stanford Law School professor.

"This is important to us because a huge amount of creative work is created inside the Office platform. Having a simple way to add Creative Commons licenses obviously helps us spread those licenses much more broadly," Lessig said.

Once installed, the license-selection software will appear as a menu option in the Microsoft office 2007 application.

It will generate a Creative Commons logo, a short summary of the license chosen, and a hyperlink to the Creative Commons Web site. People can download the software from the Creative Commons Web site or from Microsoft Office Online.

Microsoft and Creative Commons have collaborated on other projects, but the Office tool is the most significant effort to date, said Tom Rubin, associate general counsel at Microsoft.

"We very much share a common belief that creators of works should be able to express their intentions with regard to subsequent use, and Creative Commons has created exciting ways to have works shared freely or have works reused by others," Rubin said.

He said there are 400 million users of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 applications. Microsoft contracted with 3Sharp, a Redmond, Wash.-based consultant to build and test the copyright licensing tool.

The first document to be created with the Office plug-in tool will be a speech about globalism by Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian musician who is now the minister of culture in Brazil.

Lessig said that Creative Commons continues to explore ways to attach licenses to other types of content such as video and audio files.
However, Microsoft has not yet decided to make a license-selection tool for its Windows Media creation software, Rubin said.

Changes to upgrade to the old Microsoft Office suite

Microsoft office 2007 is available today for business licenses, with the public release coming in June, but we've had a chance to put the review copy through its paces. According to Microsoft, the focus of this major overhaul was on three things: to make work flow more efficient; to effectively use Web applications to make your work available anywhere; and to make collaboration with others much easier.

In our review of  Microsoft office 2007  , we look at the notable feature changes across many of the applications. Microsoft says Office 2010 will let you use your PC, smartphone, and the Web to make your projects come together more efficiently.

From what we've seen, the company might be right, but it will need to work out some of the bugs before the launch in June.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007   won't be available to the public until sometime in June, but we've put the upgrade to Microsoft's venerable Office suite through its paces to bring you our review. Read more about expanded use of the Ribbon, changes across all the apps, and much more.

One of the biggest issues with cloud computing is companies' concern about where their data will be hosted.

Microsoft office 2007 doesn't have a datacentre in Australia, which means that any data on Azure has to be hosted overseas. The Redmond giant realises that some companies may feel squeamish about where their data is located.

"The environment that you would have on-premises at a customer site is very similar to the environment that is offered on SQL Azure, which means that you can move applications from the cloud to on-premises or from on-premises to the cloud with very little, if any, changes, because underlying technology is the same. It's .NET, it's Windows Server, it's built using Visual Studio in both cases," Carraro says. "It's really a matter of building the app you need and then deciding if [it should] run on cloud or on-premises.

"This is very compelling for software vendors because some of their customers prefer an on-premises version of their application for various reasons and some customers prefer to have it in the cloud."

Despite this, preference for locally-hosted data leaves the door open for other providers that offer a cloud service hosted in datacentres around Australia. Lacking in scale that Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 mate or Amazon offer, on-premise prices often run at a premium, but customers may be prepared to front extra for the feeling of security.

It isn't just non-critical systems that companies are considering moving. "We're seeing a lot of interest around not just development and testing environments but also around production IT moving into cloud."

McNaught says that when comparing unit prices, a local-based cloud will go for a light premium, but if bandwidth costs are taken into account along with other costs of having an offshore cloud, he thinks it will be on par.

Office 15 has been closed beta 16 Microsoft preparations for the Office

As we all know, Microsoft office 2007 is developing next-generation Office business componentsOffice 15. A vice president of Microsoft's end of last year, has revealed that test Office15 internal beta has been released.

The latest news that Microsoft has already begun to recruit the Office 16 developer.

A Microsoft official mentioned in his blog on January 4, Office 16, and called ondevelopers to participate in March 2011 at the Office 15 Developer Kitchen, Summit.Allegedly, Microsoft plans to use the summit to show Access and Office 15 "advanced technology preview to developers, developers can communicate face to face with theOffice product development teams to help Microsoft" problem "before the release of, and joined the Office 15 and the Office 16 development team.

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 blog said that the Office exchange summit will be free to the public, butparticipants need to pay the cost to Redmond (Microsoft HQ).

It is reported that Office 15 is scheduled in 2013. Estimated according to the currentspeed of development of Microsoft Office 16 is likely to be released in 2016.


Prior to leak news that the Office 15 user interface will be further improved, and add some new features. Office development team will be based on a new framework ofJupiter developing Office 15, to provide a common application store platform.Therefore, the Office development team will be the new way of sales and services ofOffice 15.

Office2000 deployment management and maintenance

The Office2000 through to facilitate the custom settings and preferences so that the Office tasks easier to adapt to the specific environment. MicrosoftOfficeProfileWizard is an independent tool that can capture all the Office 2007 applications, preferences and settings. Those settings can be the backup to restore in the new user's machine, or spreading throughout the content. MicrosoftCustomInstallationWizard alternative Office97 and 95NetworkInstallationWizard, the custom installation allows administrators to create a personal, departmental or company level. IT administrators can custom installation - Install Now to install on first use, run from the server and does not install, and customize other standard installation of Office on the basis of the functional level.

Office2000 new Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 technology to track the status of those installed, and, and as key components of the program scheduler. When end users on their machines set Office2000, they will benefit from the program's "smart install", it can be based on the existing Office to set up and machine resources available to determine the best installation. The Office2000 show improvement in the migration preference settings from a previous version to completely remove the file. When unlikely events, such as the end user must give up the installation did not complete the installation, the Office2000 "auto recovery" feature will be completely "undo" the installation, restore your system to the pre-installation state. The Office2000 support to browse user profiles and to take special measures to adapt to the Windows Terminal Server.


Office2000 file format compatible with Office97, and exchanged between users running different versions of binary Office documents very easy. Office97 does not require conversion to be able to open any Office2000 files. Specific formatting options available in the Office2000 impassable because Office97 does not recognize these features. The only exception is Access as a result of new support Unicode (the previous version of Access does not support this file format). The Access2000 down stored Access97.

Microsoft's research shows that, especially the huge potential of small businesses

Representing 58% Microsoft office 2007  survey company expects competitiveness and cloud. The key factors are: 71% claimed that the available mobile access them from any method of devices and access points. In particular, two to 10 employees the company was founded, according to research results, they have three years, as a possible use in the cloud: cloud computing, as it is today three times.

SME managers, only 20% of people believe that Office 2010 Professional said that their data will be canceled in the cloud than in the ground. 70% want to know what their data is geographic. 30% claimed that their data do not leave their own country. In addition, because the rule of law or of his own worth, research is inconclusive. 65 percent, is expected to use the latest three years, the cloud e-mail. 56% want to get their IT set up by a single company.

Cloud for small businesses to provide an opportunity for you to become more competitive in a rapidly changing business environment, because less time and money in the IT and concerns of their primary task, rather than - to promote their business, vice president of channel operators in a Microsoft press release the findings.

Microsoft slashes product key allowances for TechNet subscribers

For the second time in two years, Microsoft office 2007 has significantly cut the benefits it offers to TechNet subscribers. Will the newly reduced allotments of Windows and Office product keys really reduce piracy or just annoy Microsoft’s customers?

Microsoft’s TechNet program is one of the best bargains in personal computing. For an annual subscription price of $349, TechNet Professional subscribers get access to nearly every release of every operating system (desktop and server) and Office suite.

The licenses are valid for evaluation purposes only, but the downloadable products and product keys are typically Retail products, indistinguishable from shrink-wrapped products.

Two years ago, a TechNet Professional subscription entitled you to 10 product keys for every version of Windows and every version of Office. In September 2010, citing concerns over piracy, Microsoft cut those allotments to five keys.

Now, according to an announcement at the TechNet Subscriptions home page (link available only to signed-in TechNet subscribers), the number of product keys has just been slashed again:

Beginning in mid-March 2012, subscribers to TechNet Subscriptions (excluding TechNet Standard which are entitled to 2 keys per product) may access a maximum allocation of three (3) product keys for Microsoft Office 2010 Professional  and Windows Client products in connection with their subscription. The allotted keys may only be used for software evaluation purposes. Once the maximum keys have been activated, no more keys will be made available. Additional product keys may be acquired through the purchase of an additional subscription.

In addition to that restriction, Microsoft has also imposed restrictions on the number of keys that can be claimed on any given day. As another support page notes, a TechNet Professional (Retail) subscriber can claim 44 keys in a 24-hour period.