September 28, 2003

Microsoft Office 2003 reviewed

David Pogue wrote a review on Microsoft Office 2003 over at the New York Times.

Basically he says that not much has changed in terms of new improved features for Microsoft Office 2003, other than the much improved Outlook. He explains the Information Rights Management features and also reveals that if you are sent an Office 2003 document, you won't be able to open it without having a copy of Office yourself. (Microsoft is supposed to release a Windows based reader for Office 2003 documents though. Mac users are abandoned, as usual.)

As far as upgrading though, you can only install Office 2003 if you run either the Windows 2000 or Windows XP operating systems, otherwise you are out of luck. In addition, Microsoft has 34 different permutations of the Office 2003 programs to choose from.

Pogue's recommendation is for folks to upgrade to Outlook 2003, as it is much improved. As for the other Office programs, if you haven't upgraded in a while, then Office 2003 might be a good upgrade option. However, if you already own Office XP, then Office 2003 isn't worth the money.

Update: Mike McBride has a MS Office 2003 beta blog. Cool.

Posted by joy at September 28, 2003 01:18 PM | TrackBack
Comments

>As far as upgrading though, you can only install >Office 2003 if you run either the Windows 2000 >or Windows 2003 operating systems

Actually, it runs on Windows XP too.

Posted by: Brian at September 28, 2003 01:38 PM

Whoops. My bad. I unintentionally mistyped that.

Posted by: joy at September 28, 2003 01:42 PM

Oh well. It'll be another three years before my employer upgrades (currently on Office 97, FWIW).


~sigh~


How annoying, still. Let them go - for all intents and purposes, at least - from one antitrust suit, and lo, we're stuck with an 800lb gorilla producing software for one set of platforms alone.


And I bet that Office:mac won't see any more revisions.


Posted by: iain at September 28, 2003 05:57 PM

Actually, office mac is the only thing ms will probably keep making for the mac, since it's more money for them.

Posted by: bryan at September 28, 2003 10:01 PM

Actually, I thought I heard that Microsoft was going to stop making Office for Mac, but perhaps that was only for Internet Explorer development...

Posted by: joy at September 28, 2003 10:13 PM

(Microsoft is supposed to release a Windows based reader for Office 2003 documents though. Mac users are abandoned, as usual.)

Before you get all "whoa is me" over this, like the last 2 or 3 revs of Office came out for Mac FIRST or at least at the same time.

What many people don't know is that Word and Excel were both written on the Mac long before Windows.

MS makes way too much money to stop making Office for the Mac. They are jerking Apple's chain because of Apple smashing Outlook and Explorer on the Mac.

Gates is getting pissy, that's all.

P

Posted by: Paul at September 28, 2003 11:57 PM