More buyers home in on Office 2007
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Sales of Office 2007 outperformed those of Office 2003 during the first week of launch, study shows.
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(InfoWorld) - Adoption of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system will happen at a faster pace than any previous operating system release, a software analyst predicted last week. Up to 15 percent of PC users will move to Vista within the first year that the operating system is available, said David Mitchell, the software practice leader at Ovum Ltd. "That would make it the fastest-moving operating system ever," he said. By comparison, between 12 to 14 percent of users switched to Windows XP during the first year of its release, Mitchell said. Vista will gain traction in the market from quick adoption by both corporate and consumer users. For example, companies that participate in Microsoft's Software Assurance licensing program will automatically get upgrades to Vista, Mitchell said. "On the consumer side, there has been a bit of pent-up demand. Just look at the beta adoption in the consumer space -- it's very high," he said. Windows Vista will be available to business customers from November 30, with the operating system available to consumers from January. For users who buy a new computer before Vista is released to consumers, Microsoft is now shipping Vista upgrade coupons with computers that are sold with Windows XP. The upgrade coupons mean that Microsoft will not be hurt financially by missing the year-end holiday shopping season -- a peak time for computer sales. While corporate and consumer users will quickly move to Vista, the adoption prospects forÂ Office 2007 -- which goes on sale at the same time -- are less clear. While many users may now see no need to upgrade, once Office 2007 starts to make its way into companies users may find themselves upgrading to keep pace, Mitchell said. Overall, the rate of adoption of Office 2007 will be lower than Vista during the first year, Mitchell said. "You don't get the OEM drag effect. If you buy a new PC, you get a copy of Vista. You don't necessarily get a copy of Office," he said. Â
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By George Chamberlin , Daily Transcript Financial Correspondent. Rising residential real estate values have been a blessing for many households.
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Microsoft executives said they are working hard to finish up its&#160;Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office Project 2007, an update that some users have been waiting for before deploying the most recent version of the software.SP1 will update Project Professional 2007, Project Server 2007 and Project Portfolio Server 2007, said Keshav Puttaswamy, group program manager at Microsoft, speaking during the Microsoft Office Project Conference in Seattle on Monday.It will primarily fix bugs and improve stability and performance, said Mike Angiulo, general manager of the Microsoft Project business unit. It will also enhance some cache features, he said.While the conference might have been an ideal venue for announcing the release date for SP1, executives said they&#39;ll wait another two or three weeks before disclosing that information.Office Project 2007, the most recent version of the project management software, became&#160;available earlier this year. But as with other new Microsoft software, some customers have been waiting for SP1 before deploying it.Christopher Ludlow, director of project management at Amylin Pharmaceuticals, in San Diego, said he is waiting for SP1 before migrating to Project 2007. The system integrator he works with advised him to hold off because their experience was that Project 2007 is glitchy and unstable, he said.If SP1 fixes those issues, he&#39;s interested in some of the new features of Project 2007, including a reported improved network responsiveness that may mean he doesn&#39;t have to rely on Citrix for remote access.Microsoft executives touted some other new features in Project 2007 at the conference. One of the most important updates in Project 2007 is that it can support many more users than it could previously, said Angiulo. Technology consulting firm EDS has one of the biggest deployments of Project 2003, with 8,000 users, he said. &quot;They were driving the limit of what you could get out of it,&quot; he said.Microsoft and EDS put together a scalability lab to test volume users of Project 2007. They supported 40,000 users, he said. EDS has a goal of growing to 60,000 users.Angiulo also promoted the integration of Project with other Microsoft software, such as Outlook and Excel. Because many businesses use Office software, that integration sounds helpful to Ludlow.But some of the integration is forced, which is turning other businesses away. Jan Tervonen, vice president of technology at Seattle medical technology company MRS, currently supports Project 2003. She started the upgrade to 2007 but backed out when she learned that it required the newest version of SharePoint. She wasn&#39;t ready for that upgrade yet.On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to address the conference, and he&#39;s expected to describe future planned enhancements to Project, including deeper integration with Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. In addition, future versions of Project will support earlier stage projects that aren&#39;t yet fully defined, he&#39;ll say. Those features are part of an overall strategy at Microsoft to try to expand the use of Project beyond project managers, he&#39;s expected to say.
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DISPLAY WINDOWS for holiday shoppers can be found more and more on 17-inch computer screens. The number of Americans who regularly use the Internet for shopping rose dramatically this year, with one market
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The newest version of Microsoft Office arrives this week, complete with a tricked-out user interface intended to impress the Windows-weary. By Scott Gilbertson. Plus: Gallery: Office 2007.
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(InfoWorld) - After five years and numerous delays, customers can now get their hands on the final version of the Windows Vista operating system. Well, business customers can at least. Though Microsoft celebrated theÂ launch of VistaÂ -- as well as Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 -- at events across the globe Thursday, both Vista and Office 2007 won't be generally available through retail in the U.S. until Jan. 30, 2007. Thursday marked the day business customers could purchase those products through Microsoft's volume licensing program. And though business customers can begin ordering Exchange 2007 Thursday, the new version of Microsoft's messaging server software won't be released to manufacturing until the end of December. Not only was Thursday's launch party for all three products a bit premature and anticlimactic after so long a wait for Vista, it could also be the last of its kind, according to industry watchers. With more software being pushed out to customers over the Web as services, launch parties for packaged software products may soon be a thing of the past, they said. "This is a big launch for them but for everyone else it's ho-hum," said James McQuivey, a professor for Boston University's College of Communication who specializes in marketing research and business management. "It's the biggest wait-and-see event of the week. Customers are going to wait and see when they need [Vista] and if they need it." These concerns aside, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer was on hand with his usual enthusiasm at the New York launch event to promote what is arguably the industry'sÂ most highly anticipated product launchÂ of the year. "It's an exciting thing to finally be here," Ballmer said. "That's all I'll say about the past." He had previously promised that Microsoft will never again have another lengthy gap between the major releases of its client operating system. The vendor debuted Windows XP, the previous version of its client OS, in October 2001. "This is the biggest launch in our company's history," Ballmer said. "These are frankly the most significant releases of these two products [Vista and Office] we've ever done." Vista was the big star of Thursday's event, though Microsoft teamed the OS launch with Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 for several reasons. One is that the company is trying to promote the technology links between the products to show how they can bring better worker productivity and cost savings to business customers in the hopes companies will purchase and deploy all three at once. Another reason for the triple product launch is that Vista has been so long coming, Microsoft felt it had to give customers a little extra incentive to be excited about it, said Sunil Misra, vice president of Getronics. The provider of managed services and consulting has been helping business customers prepare for Vista deployment. "It's the love campaign," Misra said, referring to the launch of all three products together. "People have been waiting a long time for Vista." The last time Microsoft released Windows and Office together was with Windows 95. But during that time in the heyday of Windows, customers would have flocked to the new OS release even without its tie to Office. "It's not nearly as exciting as it used to be in the old days," said McQuivey. "With Windows 95 and 98, you actually had people waiting in line at [retail store] Best Buy" to purchase the OS. This certainly isn't the case now, as consumers can't purchase Vista until January. And it may not even be the case then, as consumers in addition to business customers have said they may hold off on purchasing Vista until they need a new PC. Many of those new PCs are bought during the busy holiday shopping season that is currently in progress, but since Vista is not available yet in retail outlets, it can't benefit from that rush. In lieu of that, Microsoft's hardware partners such as Hewlett-Packard and DellÂ are offering discount coupons for the OS if customers buy PCs that are capable of running it this holiday season. On the business side, customers will likely continue their Vista planning process throughout the end of the year and most of 2007, Misra said. Indeed, most analysts think the bulk of Vista business deployments won't happen until 2008. (China Martens in Boston contributed to this story.)
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More than 1 percent of all households faced foreclosure during 2007, almost twice the previous year's rate, a real estate marketing company said on Tuesday.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft executives said they are working hard to finish up itsÂ Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Office Project 2007, an update that some users have been waiting for before deploying the most recent version of the software.
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Sales up 13.5% PC sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) were up 13.5 per cent in Q2 2007, according to market watcher IDC. A total of 17.5m desktop and notebook computers were sold in the region, with a 31 per cent increase in notebook sales compared to the same period last year.â¦
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Microsoft on Thursday released to manufacturing Exchange Server 2007, a product developers say they "bet the company on." According to Exchange team lead Terry Myerson, Microsoft has 120,000 mailboxes running on Exchange 2007, with 200 partners utilizing the software for another 55,000.
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The unique features of the 2007 Microsoft Office System make it an extremely challenging migration. However, best practices and automation can significantly improve process efficiency and reliability.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c47325)  has announced the addition of In-Depth Analysis: More Consumers to Tune  Into Digital Radio in 2007 to their offering.
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More buyers are turning Palm Springs, Calif., which has long been considered a second-home haven, into a primary residence.
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The number of homeowners with property valued at more than Â£1m rises - with the majority in London.
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Microsoft Corp.  said on  Thursday that more than 200 million users will be using one of  its new products -- including its highly-anticipated Windows  Vista operating system, Office 2007 software suite and Exchange  server -- by the end of 2007.
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For years, people who use Microsoft Office have been asking for less.