Yikes, tough times for Microsoft indeed. Microsoft has finally encountered for the first time since the early nineties what it fears the most. Competition. Apple is now a viable threat to their PC dominance in the home and is also gaining ground in the business market. Linux is chomping away at their server business and eating away at the low end with Netbooks being pre loaded with Linux. Add in the fact that Google is now aiming at them with the Chrome OS and things are going to get worse. And if they continue to throw money at unprofitable side businesses like Bing and the X-Box, things could get bad more quickly than they realize. I really think they need a new CEO who could really get them back to focusing on their core Windows and Office business.
July 23, 2009
October 20, 2007
Office 2008 Macintosh Beta
Well, I have come across a copy of the Office 2008 beta for Macintosh and have some initial conclusions. Overall, it feels pretty zippy on my Intel iMac with a Core Duo processor. Much better than using the Rosetta based Office 2004. I have opened a few Office XML files from Windows machines and they open just fine, although, I have not opened very complicated documents. The updated interface is nice, and looks more in tune with the Apple programs like Pages. Seems stable, I have not had it crash on me yet, so kudos to the MBU at Microsoft at that. Some items I did notice were missing from the Mac version compared to Office 2007 for Windows. The equation editor has not been updated to the same version of the Office 2007 version. The equation editor in Office 2007 is really good, actually approaching the quality of Latex based output. Secondly, there is no support for blogging, (or I am not smart enough to find it) which is another cool feature of the Windows version. I have not tried any of the Exchange functionality, as I use imap for my email. If someone gave me an Exchange account, I could give it a try.
