Question: Office 14

Hi all. I have a question about what's now being called Office 14 as it relates to the current Microsoft Office 2007 edition. I haven't done much reading on it lately and I don't know if there is a Beta out yet or not, so my question may be easy or difficult depending on where Microsoft is on the project. My main question is: How different should we expect the next iteration of the Office suite to be from Office 2007? I really don't see them doing anything different as far as the ribbon is concerned, but what about everything else? Does anyone think it will be a drastic enough change to warrant purchasing (price withstanding), or will it be similar enough to 2007 that it won't be rendered obsolete and one could continue to use it without feeling like he or she is missing out on extra functions/features?

I know that most people won't know for sure, so I guess I'm really just asking for any and everyone's best guess. What do you believe will be the difference.

 

The change isn't as radical as Office '03 to '07, from what I've seen. I would say it's not worth the upgrade price unless you can get some very significant student discount.

 

Thanks, MidnightSun. That's what I thought, but I wanted to get some other opinions.

 

I hear the next version will be web based which will be totally different from any office ever from Microsoft. Google has a web based office package also.

 

I heard about this a long time ago as well, but I don't know if it has ever been confirmed as truth. I'd be interested to see if we get any more news about this in the coming months.

 

I think there may be a web-based component so that you can more easily share your documents across cyberspace, and do some editing there, but there will definitely still be desktop applications. And you'd probably still want to use the desktop applications for most of your editing since Office will run best (and quickest) there - and you won't face any problems due to Internet issues.

My guess is it won't be that different from 2007, though. Maybe like Office XP to Office 2003. Might as well get 2003 over XP if you don't have Office, but no real reason to upgrade if you already have it. Even with regards to the online component, almost every computer has Office already, so if you need your document somewhere else just email it to yourself. And if that computer doesn't have Office for some reason, you can always fall back to Google Documents.

 

Thanks, Apollo. This is what I was thinking myself.

 

Some screenshots: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/27/office-2010-screenshots-emerge

 

Yeah, there will be a free web version and an expensive desktop version. Office 14 will also come in 32 and 64 bit flavors.

Office is dirt cheap with student discounts for the Action Pack for businesses.

 

The funny thing is, the change from '03 to '07 wasn't all that significant. If you take out the Ribbon change and the new document format, pretty much all the features are the same. Probably the most significant change IMO was the change of Excel's Pivot Tables.

 

Thanks, Swarmer.

I have to only slightly agree. The Ribbon change was enough, IMO, to call it a significant change between the two. Overall, I enjoy using the '07 suite a lot more than the '03.

 

I'm hoping for some integration with this awesome addon from Microsoft Office labs:

http://www.officelabs.com/projects/searchcommands/Pages/default.aspx

 

Something else to consider changing from 03 (and older) to 07 - the new fil format is completely new - has anybody ever compared file sizes?

Its much more efficient ad smaller - that I'd call sigificant.

 

They're also human-readable. Just rename a .docx file to .zip and take a look around. Huge improvement over the old .doc format.

 

and a nuissance - reason:
downlod a .docx file and its turned into a zip file.. same for ppt and excel - but I know what yo mean