See your link here
Microsoft does it again
11 commentsIt's no surprise really, but Microsoft has done it again. A statement released by the company's PR firm confirms that Office 2007 is to be delayed, yet again. Now it looks like it will be sometime in early 2007 (how appropriate) before the Office Suite becomes available to general consumers and small- and mid-sized businesses.
It's disappointing. As I've mentioned before, I'm not only a Microsoft Baby, but I'm also a Beta Tester for the Office 2007 suite. And I'm ever the optimist. As a Beta Tester, I love the program. It's much more user-friendly than previous versions of Office. But that won't do anyone any good until it becomes widely available.
I don't usually pick on Microsoft, but what if other companies worked the way this company does? Say for example that a car manufacturer went to all of the expense of widely advertising a new model car only to step up a few months before the car is to be released to say that the release is delayed because of customer feedback? Without a doubt, drivers that were holding out for the new model would begin to look elsewhere.
Of course, they have the option of looking elsewhere. And I guess that's where Microsoft has us all over a barrel. There are a few other suites of office applications available, but none are as widely used as Microsoft Office. So, when the company says it's coming and then changes its mind, there's little that users can do about it. (Although I'm interested in seeing what comes of Google Office, because that could give us all additional options.)
The flip side of this is that the longer Microsoft takes to develop the program and the more Beta Testers provide input, the better the program will be when it's released. Software patches and updates are a fact of life, but honestly, I think it's a fact that Microsoft is responsible for creating.
In the end, we'll wait. When the program comes out, users will be slow to adopt it, but when they do, they'll find it's well worth the expense of upgrading. And then we'll all do our regularly scheduled updates (yeah, right). And when something else comes along, we'll be slow to walk away from Microsoft, because for those of us who truly are Microsoft Babies, it's all we've ever known. Now, if every business could just figure out how to accomplish this process with their product...
Print
Email this
Digg this
