Office 2007 SP1 auto-installs confuse Vista, XP users
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Some users are getting the massive Office 2007 SP1 update automatically -- even though Microsoft said it would not use Windows' Automatic Updates to push out the  upgrade for months.
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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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Although Monday was supposed to be the day when Microsoft began pushing Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) to enterprises, it changed its mind at the last minute and delayed the automatic updating for more than a ...
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft may be having trouble selling Windows Vista in retail, but its Office line is going like gangbusters, according to market research firm NPD Group. Part of the reason: People who switch from PCs to Macs. Office 2007 on Windows is selling at roughly double the rate its predecessor, Office 2003, did in its first months after release, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said Wednesday. "Any way you cut it, the first six months, or a similar January-through-July period, or the first week or even the first month [of sales], no matter how you slice it, Office 2007 is selling much better than Office 2003 did," said Swenson. And even though Office 2004 for Mac is far from new, Swenson said, it's also contributing to Microsoft's suite success. "Mac Office represents about 20 percent of all Office sales in U.S. retail. At first, that seemed really surprising, but if I'm switching to Mac, there are a few key [software] products I'm going to buy, and Office is one of them." In other words, even though they're leaving the PC behind and abandoning Windows, newly-minted Mac owners are still shoveling money at Microsoft, Swenson said. "Microsoft's still making the Office sale," he said. Swenson's data comes from NPD's monthly reports of software sold at major U.S. retailers such as Best Buy and CompUSA as well as data from the more than 180 Apple retail stores and a few online sellers, including Amazon.com and Buy.com. Mac switchers aside, Microsoft's unheralded success selling Office -- Swenson noted that it typically gets buried by the bad news about Vista's retail performance -- stems from smart pricing. "The most important thing is the pricing of Home and Student 2007," he said, talking about the $149 package that lets customers install the software on up to three PCs. "Eighty percent of all copies sold at retail are this edition," said Swenson. "When Microsoft came out with version 2.0 of [this package], it started seeing increases not only in unit volume, but also in dollars." Swenson was referring to the licensing changes Microsoft made to the student-priced edition in 2003 that bumped up the number of allowed installs in the same household from one to three. Second on Swenson's list of reasons for Office 2007's success is something Microsoft has little control over. "Part of it is clearly installed base," he said. "There are roughly 100 million more PCs now than there were in 2001, so even if the same percentage of users buy Office, sales go up." But if Office 2007 is outselling its forerunner, why did the company just roll out a $59.95 promotional price to students? "I think they want to drive demand for [Office 2007] Ultimate," said Swenson. "It's just not doing as well as Ultimate on Vista." The Microsoft promotion, which runs through April 30, 2008, is available immediately to enrolled students in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. who have a matching educational institution e-mail address. Next week, the program will expand to France, Italy, and Spain. Office Ultimate 2007, which lists for $679.95, includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Groove, and InfoPath. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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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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With automatic download of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) enormous SP2 security patch to the Windows XP operating system set to begin, the industry still waits to understand its ramifications. Home users that have their preferences set to receive operating-system updates as they are made available by Microsoft may be surprised to learn that some of the software they already run on their systems could be disabled by SP2 or may run very differently.
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Office for Mac 2008 incorrectly assigns ownership of some files, Microsoft has confirmed, creating a potential security problem for businesses installing the new application suite.Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, was the first to notice the ownership snafu. "[Microsoft] moved to Apple's Package Maker (.pkg) installer files, good news for the enterprise, [but] unfortunately, they've created all the packages to install most all of the files with the owner set to 502."In a shop where employees run with limited privileges -- a practice very common in an enterprise -- and IT is the only user with full administrative rights, Office 2008's ownership assignment means that a user who wasn't supposed to have complete control over those files actually does. In other words, whomever is assigned user ID 502 has full read/write access to Office's files."So let's say, Mr. IT installs this on a user's machine where the first user is the admin[istrator] (501) and the standard user is Joe User (502)," said Bruner in a post to his blog on Monday. "Well, when after all's installed, it will give Joe User (502) ownership of these folders and their installed contents:/Library/Automator/ (if it doesn't exist already) /Library/Fonts/Microsoft /Library/Application Support/Microsoft /Applications/Microsoft Office 2008"The screw-up could present a corporate security problem, at least internally, said Bruner, if that Mac's second, standard user -- user 502 -- decides to make changes to the folders and files by, say, deleting some or moving others.A Microsoft developer left a comment at Bruner's blog confirming that the company knows about the problem. "The MacBU (Mac Business Unit) is aware of this issue," said Erik Schwiebert, a software design lead in the group.Microsoft, however, did not immediately respond to queries about how it intends to correct the problem and what users can do in the meantime.Other commenters at Bruner's blog hesitated to blame only Microsoft, however. "The truth is that this is a long-standing flaw in Apple's Installer," argued someone identified as Not Required. "Maybe Microsoft should have known better, but maybe Apple should also have improved their installer years ago. Apple clearly hasn't cared enough about smaller developers to make a fix, so hopefully Microsoft has a high enough profile that something finally gets done."In a follow-up post also on Monday, Bruner added that all the Office for Mac 2008 files owned by user 502 are also erroneously set as executable. "Now tell me does '/Microsoft Office 2008/Read Me.html' need to be executable for you to look at it?" asked Bruner. "Tick, tick, tick, *ding*! No. It does not."
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Microsoft has begun sending Windows XP Service Pack 2 to home users via of its automatic update system. Despite a few flaws that already have been found in the massive patch, the update will strengthen system security for most Windows XP ...
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If you still don't see a need to upgrade, you're not alone--many people are opting for XP even on new PCs. We'll show you how the Vista transition will become smoother.
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The new waiting game Comment Vista is a step forward in security, but many businesses will be stuck with Windows XP for years to come, due to the cost of upgrading, the value of existing assets, and compatibility issues that trump security features.â¦
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Slip of the tongue - or the brain Comment The UK Developer launch of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System was pretty impressive, as such things usually are.â¦
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Microsoft said it would not use Windows' Automatic Updates to push out the large Office upgrade for several months, but some users got it anyway.
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Numerous applications, including some of Microsoft&#39;s own, have encountered compatibility problems with Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2).
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The controversial Service Pack 3 was never distributed to Microsoft Office end users through Automatic Updates, Microsoft told BetaNews. So if you're a Lotus Notes or Corel Quattro user who wants to undo its impact, you can.
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Applying the&#160;SP1 update to Vista&#160;does nothing to improve its application compatibility, with almost 20 percent of software still unable to run, a study has found.Recently founded application testing company AppDNA ran a &#39;before&#39; and &#39;after&#39; on Vista using SP1 (service pack 1) using its AppTitude system, finding that it made no difference whatsoever to its ability to run a test suite of corporate 500 applications, 18 percent of which failed to work without help.As bad as this sounds, the company rated this as good news because service packs normally introduce as many problems as they solve. That SP1 left compatibility performance unchanged was in stark contrast to the experience with SP2 for Windows XP, which&#160;unexpectedly broke many applications&#160;that had worked before.&quot;Organizations have been waiting to see SP1. But people have been wary after SP2 [for XP],&quot; said AppDNA&#39;s CTO, Paul Schnell. &quot;The updates have been incremental and had no impact on compatibility.&quot;The AppTitude testing software used an algorithmic technique to look at applications for behavior known to break Vista. The company also ran usability tests by loading software and digging around to see whether there were issues, Schnell said.Customers running the tests on their own applications using AppTitude would receive an indication of the severity of compatibility issues using a red, amber and green light system, giving them the information needed to plan migration. The software also provided a report on possible fixes.According to its official history, AppDNA is in its first month of independent operation, having been spun out of application migration specialist Camwood, which remains a channel partner. The company won&#39;t be keen to annoy Microsoft too much - its early business has it working closely with the latter on migration projects.Equally, Microsoft has long given up worrying about the Vista&#39;s difficult image. The news that it might still have issues with one in five applications won&#39;t come as a surprise.Redmond has announced its own application migration tools for Vista and prepared for the long haul. The company has pursued a policy of open access to the SP1 refresh, making as few claims as possible regarding the specific issue of compatibility.Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Some say Win XP SP2 enhancements cause conflicts, don't protect as claimed.
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Microsoft has confirmed that it will deliver Windows XP Service Pack 2 to users via Automatic Update starting tomorrow. The company previously delayed including SP2 as an automatic update due to concerns from businesses that their infrastructures were not prepared for the significant operating system changes. Users who cannot download the hefty 100MB service pack will be able to find the update on CD bundled with numerous computer magazines, according to Microsoft. An official SP2 end-user Web site will also launch tomorrow.