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Print 22 comment(s) - last by Locutus465.. on Dec 7 at 9:51 AM
Office 2007 SP1 is just around the corner

When the words Service Pack 1 (SP1) are tossed around these days, everyone immediately thinks of Windows Vista. SP1 is the first service pack for Vista and aims to bring performance enhancements, bug fixes and improvements to Microsoft's anti-piracy efforts.

However, it's easy to forget that Windows Vista isn't the only major software effort that Microsoft released last November. On November 30, 2006, Microsoft also launched Office 2007 -- and it's time for Microsoft's best-selling productivity suite to get an update.

Development of Office 2007 SP1 is a bit further along than Vista SP1 and Microsoft is expected to release the update to customers on Tuesday, December 11. According to Microsoft, many of the improvements found in Office 2007 SP1 are in direct response to corporate/consumer feedback.

Although Microsoft has remained tight-lipped on the exact contents of SP1, ZDNET uncovered these additions in mid-August:

  • Improved support for VSTO v3
  • Better Object Model documentation for coding
  • Improved support for .NET v3.5
  • PowerPoint animated text has been upgraded
  • Compatibility issues with previous Office file formats have been corrected
  • Changes have been made to DirectX video overlay

In addition to these changes, there will be other small bug fixes and security updates included to bring Office 2007 up to date.

Due to concerns from corporate customers afraid of compatibility issues, SP1 will not be pushed out via Automatic Update Deployment. This will give customers a chance to test the service pack out first before automatically deploying it to all systems.

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I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By Exodus220 on 12/6/2007 2:00:32 AM , Rating: 5
I love Office 2007. When the beta was available I downloaded and installed it and was not immediately won over. It took a couple weeks to get used to the interface and changes from Office XP-2003, but once those adjustments were made I fell in love. Eventually the beta copy was no longer usable and I was forced to either pay tons of money (don't have that money) or downgrade to an older Office. I settled for downgraded and switching between MS Office and OpenOffice.

However, Microsoft has a killer deal for everyone currently attending a university. Office 2007 Ultimate for only $59.95. After getting a crappy/buggy version of Office XP from my school district I decided it was time to bite the bullet and pay for software (yeah, not my strong point). I have loved Office 2007 and am happy it will soon be getting a service pack. Regardless of what anyone says, MS got this one right...they actually got me to pay for their product.




RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By GeorgeOrwell on 12/6/07, Rating: 0
RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By 306maxi on 12/6/2007 6:32:59 AM , Rating: 4
Office 2007 is usable. Therein lies the difference. Openoffice always used to crash for me and the girlfriend never found it as user friendly as Office. We have office 2007 now and she reckons it's far far easier to use and is 100% stable. At the end of the day you get what you pay for. With Microsoft you get support. Again with open office as with all open source products the support just isn't the same.

At the end of the day I only use Office for outlook, basic word processing and keeping track of how much my next PC is going to cost me. But for someone like my girlfriend who is a teacher who needs something which is going to behave predictably and be usable on most PC's it's MS Office all the way and thanks to using the MS University offer we got it nice and cheap too!


RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By FITCamaro on 12/6/2007 8:12:52 AM , Rating: 3
OpenOffice isn't nearly as polished as even Office 2003. I'll use it on a machine that I just need the ability to open a Word document on. But not if I actually plan to use it.


RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By Mitch101 on 12/6/2007 9:38:33 AM , Rating: 4
Agreed. Open Office is a great product if you don't have the cash for Office or plan on doing any advanced functionality for the individual.

When it comes to corporate collaboration nothing compares to Microsoft Office. Even Mac's dominant application is Microsoft Office. Anyone remember Word Perfect? Office Rocks!

If you want to rank of a MS product pick on Microsoft Works.


RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By omnicronx on 12/6/2007 11:21:37 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
What features of Office 2007 do you use that are not available in OpenOffice or Lotus Symphony?
If you are an average user that types up his/her christmas list once a year then yes you are perfectly correct. It's beyond me how people do not know how powerful office really is. If you have ever done any VBA programming or work with Macros you would know.

As for office 2007, there have been some great strides. My favorite is that MS has done away with binary file formats. Meaning although your files are saved with .doc, xls, etc file formats, they are really being saved in the new Office Open XML File Formats. This is amazing for developers/programmers as any application that supports XML can access and work with data in the new file format.


RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By TomZ on 12/6/2007 12:27:33 PM , Rating: 2
I agree, and I find it totally ironic that Microsoft has finally adopted an open file format (meaning it is well-documented and you can manipulate it without requiring an Office application), then the same people complain because the format is too complicated and that it wasn't directly compatible with OOo, even though its XML format didn't meet the requirements for MS Office.


RE: I Enjoy Using Office 2007
By Locutus465 on 12/7/2007 9:51:53 AM , Rating: 1
OpenOffice is really only suitable for light duty work, which is why I think FOSS Geeks love it so much. Typically they don't do a whole lot more than light duty Word processing anyway. MS office is still the way to go for people who really work with these suites day in and day out.


Hope they fix Outlook
By PitViper007 on 12/6/2007 9:13:53 AM , Rating: 2
Overall, I've been impressed with how Office 2007 functions. It has taken me a while to get used to the new Ribbon, but it is easier to find functions that I need. My only major beef with O2k7 is Outlook. It is SO SLOW, and has been since the beginning. There was supposedly a fix for that several months ago, which I did apply, but didn't really fix the problem for me. Just to give an example of what's going on, I can start up Outlook and it will take about a minute for it to finish loading to where I can start d/ling my email. Contrast that with my Outlook 2002 that I use at work. It takes about 2 seconds to accomplish the same task. And it's not the computer either. My home computer is a much more powerful machine than my work machine (P4 3.4, 2GB ram compared to P4 2.4, 1GB ram). At this point I'd honestly rather use Outlook Express.




RE: Hope they fix Outlook
By notfeelingit on 12/6/2007 9:41:37 AM , Rating: 2
I'd assume at work you're connecting to an Exchange server, which will be much more responsive than the (more than likely) large pst file your home computer must open.

On your home PC, modify your autoarchive settings to move your old mail into an archive folder. If your inbox only contains ~50 messages, it should run smooth as silk.


RE: Hope they fix Outlook
By PitViper007 on 12/6/2007 2:30:58 PM , Rating: 2
Actually at work I connect through POP. We do have the capability to use Exchange, however due to space limitations on the server, we don't allow too many exchange connections. We are still on Exchange 2000 and I would dearly love to upgrade it but we'd need new hardware as well as the Win Server 2k3 and Exchange 2k3/2k7 because of the 64bit OS requirement. I've asked for funding on this but it's hard to come by. Oh, if you haven't noticed by now, I'm the Exchange administrator for my company.


RE: Hope they fix Outlook
By omnicronx on 12/6/2007 2:50:53 PM , Rating: 2
A lot of people have problems with add-ins (especially when upgraded from 2003) and rss feeds.

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2007/03/microsoft-outlo...

try loading outlook in safemode, that was my first indication that settings within outlook were the culprit.
run:(outlook /safe)


RE: Hope they fix Outlook
By PitViper007 on 12/6/2007 3:14:04 PM , Rating: 2
I'll try it. Thanks


forgot one:
By dare2savefreedom on 12/6/07, Rating: -1
RE: forgot one:
By Cygni on 12/6/07, Rating: 0
RE: forgot one:
By stmok on 12/6/2007 1:54:30 AM , Rating: 4
As a Linux user, I have to say...Why bring Linux into this? Huh?


RE: forgot one:
By dsx724 on 12/6/2007 7:38:46 AM , Rating: 2
i think the poster wrongly assumed that the first post was by a linux fanboy when it could have been a mac fanboy.


RE: forgot one:
By 306maxi on 12/6/2007 4:17:22 AM , Rating: 1
Any opportunity to bash Microsoft.....

The biggest problem with Windows is the users. That's the main reason why Windows is more susceptable to viruses.


RE: forgot one:
By retrospooty on 12/6/2007 9:40:16 AM , Rating: 4
If by that you mean the sheer amount of users then yes, you are correct. 90% of the market means you are the prime target.


RE: forgot one:
By 306maxi on 12/6/2007 10:53:25 AM , Rating: 3
What I meant was that anyone can walk into any store and buy a Windows machine. Whereas it's usually people who know what they're doing and don't just click OK to all warnings who run Linux machines. So by default a Linux machine will be quite secure because the user is most likely not a total moron.

But yes what you say is also correct in that it's cool to hack Windows.


RE: forgot one:
By Snuffalufagus on 12/6/2007 2:16:51 PM , Rating: 2
"So by default a Linux machine will be quite secure because the user is most likely not a total moron."

If you read enough of the posts araound here you'll realize that's not true :).


RE: forgot one:
By TomZ on 12/6/2007 10:48:32 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
So by default a Linux machine will be quite secure because the user is most likely not a total moron.

By most accounts, Linux has less than 1% of desktop marketshare, and that is of course split across different distros and running on different types of processors (mostly X86).

Based on this, how cost effective is it for criminal hackers to develop exploits for Linux? Especially compared to the 90%+ marketshare that Windows has.

Understand this, and you will know why Linux is "more secure" so to speak.


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