Windows 7, Office 14 to create bigger lame ducks than George W. Bush

My company is the web-based

My company is the web-based project management software provider and I can say that sometimes it's still hard to get to the end-users. But the situation gets better and better every month. In fact the crisis is helping. We offer affordable inexpensive solutions that answer the need of the companies that are trying to cut costs. Huge software packages are available at prices that are 70% higher than ours. If you ask me what industries are more willing to adopt new tools, I'd say these are design, marketing and tech industries. However, our software starts to penetrate into, such closed areas as construction and logistics. We have several great examples of that. So I think estencive end-user adoption is only a matter of time.

Businesses don't deploy at Microsoft's beckon

I have been rolling out some new Dell Optiplex 755 systems for the past 4 weeks at a Government Agency and the procurement includes both Windows Vista Business and XP Professional media. The systems are preloaded with XP because we are just not ready for Vista, some of the custom applications need to be updated. But Vista is definitely on their agenda, but it will take some time before they start rolling it out and it will most likely be incremental.

Waiting on Windows 7 to skip Vista does not make sense especially for businesses, since the same kernel will be used which means, any incompatibilities today moving from XP to Vista will also be there when trying to move from XP to 7. The strategy for most enterprise roll outs is to use a proven and tested product, which Vista will be by 2010, by then the second Service Pack should also be out. I don't see a mass deployment of Windows 7, its the same case for most versions of Windows in the past.

We need to also understand how businesses procure licenses and software from Microsoft. That's through Software Assurance and Enterprise Agreement. Which means Vista is on their schedule, not Microsoft. We are talking about an OS that Microsoft plans to support until 2016.

If everybody is using Macs and Web services, why does Windows have over a billion users and growing with continued growth in their Office business while Macs are stuck at a stagnant 20 million since the mid 90's?

If XP and Office 2003 work - DO NOT UPGRADE

Your the CIO at a major company: If you want to keep your job and save your company a lot of money in redundant employee training and tech support calls, do not migrate to Vista or any flavor of Office beyond 2003. Your power users of Excel, Access, PowerPoint will thank you for it. I am a power-user and have a multi-boot system with Vista 32 & 64, plus Linux. Vista is if nothing else, ANNOYING! It's almost like running nagware with all its intrusive calls back to Microsoft. After doing my best to adopt Office 2007, it's obvious they designed it for beginners at the expense of power-users in order to earn upgrade income and gain new customers. However, 95% of marketing analytics, sales compensation models, and accounting workbooks with scripts are created and managed by 5% of the top Excel and Access users at a typical company. Your power users may experience severe compatibility issues between work created in 2003 and 2007, and waste many hours trying to find where Microsoft hid even the most basic tools in that hideous real estate hog of a ribbon. I live and die by pivot tables, and they are in my view much less flexible in 2007. They are however more visible to beginners, so expect your IT team and power users having to waste hours fielding questions by Office novices who begin playing with pivot tables on their own. I went so far as to purchase a third-party tool that re-creates in 2007 the 2003 toolbar. While I've been able to use 2007 on several complex projects, it is so frustrating, that I purchased Office 2003 on Amazon. Now I have Office 2007 and 2003. I'll use Office 2007 for clients that have it forced upon them by a CIO and CDOE policy. I hope that the top 5% of power users at Microsoft have to eat their own dog food (Office 2007). That would be sweet justice.

"Amazingly, Google stock has

"Amazingly, Google stock has risen on the news from PDC this week. Microsoft stock has risen almost 10% today as well. (Since a rising tide lifts all boats, even Yahoo stock is going north today. Wow.)"

That's because of speculation that the fed will raise interest rates, dummy. The whole stock market jumped. Do you read the news?

Hmm..

Perhaps if you worried less about Bush bashing
and paid attention to your job, you would catch
things like this:

lame ducked thier

thier??

Why Bother?

I don't understand why people let themselves be ruled by MSFT when there's a free and better OS (Linux). The latest Ubuntu comes out tomorrow -- I'll be downloading and installing it. Whoopee! It's great to be free!

I believe Office 2008 for

I believe Office 2008 for Mac is Office 13. Am I wrong? It came soon after Office 2007.