Comments on: Broader Office 14 testing coming by fall

Microsoft says in the third quarter it will launch a "technology preview" of the suite to be dubbed Office 2010. The final version is due in the first half of next year.

[megustansalchichas]

i hope they get rid of the stupid ribbon

[derilium]

imo, the ribbon is actually rather nice to me. i think they should have a classic mode that puts it in a standard mode, but regular mode has ribbon.

[ncalishome]

I agree with derilium. It was a bit hard to get used to having used MS Office for many years and versions, but it really didn't take long. And now that I'm used to it I consider it a remarkable improvement. I can see how some people that are ingrained with the old menus might have a harder time adjusting than others, some people just adapt faster than others.

[Mr. Dee]

Why do you Office 2007 is such a success? If you can't adjust to change, stop using computers once and for all. Its people like if they had controlling power's in this industry, we would still be looking at command prompts.

[Commander_Spock]

Huh! "stupid ribbon" you are talking about... Did they sit down with the American "bankers" and "Home-Owners" to know what features are needed to be included in "Office 2010" and which were needed long before former President Bush took office!!!

[Vegaman_Dan]

@Commander_Spock:

Could you try posting your comments again, perhaps this time with some relevance to the story or... at least by making some sort of sense? Right now they appear to be ramblings with no real direction or purpose. I'm not making fun of your comments- they just don't appear to be complete or have any meaning.

[Commander_Spock]

"Vegaman_Dan"! Why do you sometimes wish to use that CNET Forum a a Consulting Practice. Geez.... Do you meant to say that you are the "only person" on the planet that is not aware of the financial and economic woes of the USA and other countries around the world that may have contributed in getting then Senator Obama the job as President of the United States of America.

How about asking the CEOs of GM, Chrysler, Ford, the Banks... to show you the economic projections; and, what was missed years............... ago. Then, this might start making some "sense" to you.

[Commander_Spock]

Also, ""Vegaman_Dan"" - From an "Economic Perspective"...You may ask the Europeans what is the "Concorde" doing sitting on an "Old American Aircraft Carrier" in New York City's Hudson River when persons should have been flying around the world with it.

Hope you understand the "Economic Analysis" capabilities.......(long overdue) with which "Office 14, Lotus Symphony et al" should now come!

[paulsecic]

The ribbon makes it harder to find stuff/

[BK216]

Getting rid of the ribbon would be horrible. If anything, as long as they stick with it people will realize how much better it is than the old way

[Mr. Dee]

Somehow I am feeling that this Office upgrade is not gonna be a block buster like version 2007. In someway, I feel like the Office Team has hit a stumbling block when it comes to ideas. This release will pretty much feel like going from Office XP to 2003. So far the only radical news is, you will be able to use some cut down versions of Word and Excel in the web browser.

[Dalmatian28]

The best part about the Office 2007 was the ribbon! It makes office so much easier to use and let you get quicker to the options that you want. The reason why most people use Office is because it is so practical. Those people that don't like it have options like Open Office and what ever junk Apple offers! I can't believe that there are people that actually want to go backwards!

[Bob Kakis]

Great work, Ina!

2 IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

Have they mentioned their plans for the Outlook PST file? Outlook 2007 had been advertised as being able to maintain a 20 GB PST file. In reality, an Outlook 2007 personal folders file taps out at around 5 GB. PST files should have a limit of the available hard drive space. Normal people like having all of their emails in a single PST file. Multiple PST files just get messy.

Among many things, Microsoft had killed the grammar check explanations in Office for Mac 2008, and they had significantly changed it for Office 2007. Will they be doing the same with Office 2010?

I use this tool for teaching English to ESL students.

How can I address these concerns to Microsoft?

[CTO_Dude]

The PST problem is really more of a network storage issue. With high-end shared storage (SAN) costing so much money traditionally, companies put quotas on mailboxes because it just cost too much to host huge mailboxes on the server. Exchange 2007 changed it drastically by moving to a 64bit platform which cut the disk requirements drastically... actually IOPS reduced by 60%. In the next version of Exchange, I think it's also safe to say that disk requirements will be improved again. This translates to lower storage costs because you can use less expensive RAID and less expensive spindles (like going from SCSI to SATA) to accomodate more users without impacting performance because the IOPS requirements go down as well. This all translates to larger quotas and therefore less PST files sitting on desktops.

[BOTNET]

20GB file on local on network file is really not a good idea in general. For personal use, I think Outlook should split PST files into separate PSTs but still show it as one archive so from user view there is no change

from corporate view, PST should not be allowed and server side archiving should be improved internally in exchange 10 (see exchange 10 beta)

[ddhboy]

Jesus, I wish that they'd stop gimping the OSX version of office. I tried to export out a Powerpoint presentation to Word, a process that was pretty simply back in Office 2003 in Windows where you'd just select export to word and get a variety of options. Apparently no such option exists on the mac versions. If you export to word all you'll get is the text, no notes, nothing, just the text. Apparently there is no way around it either.

[monkeyfun14]

I wish Apple would stop gimping Safari and iTunes for Windows.

[BOTNET]

I wish Apple would not force me to install SAFARI every time there is update for iTunes

[Angmarr]

new Office is bad ass!

the only annoying thing is that sometimes you have to save docX as doc because some people dont have the new. So you cant save some of the new features

[Chevalr1c]

OOXML (.docx, .pptx, etc.) is a failure from a technical point of view. Compared to the 97/2000/xp formats and ODF (.odt, .odp, etc.) they generate files that are unnecessarily big. While lastmentioned are as advanced as OOXML when it comes to the mark-up and content possibilities.

[dougjake]

I like Commander Spock's comments. For some reason they remind me of that classic Star Trek episode where those beautiful women steal Spock's brain. Not a huge fan of the ribbon. Not sure why Microsoft felt they needed to fix a menu system that wasn't really broken. Not only that but it takes up quite a bit of real estate on your screen. That being said it wasn't that hard to get used to and is very functional when combined with a customized Quick Access toolbar containing my favorite commands.

[Commander_Spock]

Thank you for that compliment "dougjake". It appears that "Vegaman_Dan" would rather have it all on a "Golden Platter" and for the longest while it is believed that he is on the Redmond Payroll. The thing is - I sometimes feel sorry for GWB who may not have known where to lay some of the blame for the performances in the U.S Housing and Banking sectors in particular (where it all appeared to have started).

We all know what is said about "The Bad Worker And His Tools" - Huh!

Now, let us imagine if (beyond those analytical tools for the banking industries) all those American families who have lost their homes, jobs.... had the right "analytical tools" also from the get go! Would they be in the situations they are now - Question is: Will/can Microsoft Office 14 do what some want it to do for them?