When you have the most popular productivity software on the market what's next? If you’re Microsoft then you start by asking the customers themselves what they want the next Office to be. Specifically the younger customers from 19 to 24.
When it comes to improving the spelling checker in Word or finding new ways to draw charts in Excel, Microsoft probably has things covered.
But to figure out the broad changes needed for its venerable Office software, Microsoft is turning to an Indian medical student, an aspiring architect from Kenya and 13 other young adults from across the globe. The young people, ages 19 to 24, are part of an "Information Worker Board of the Future" that will spend this week touring Microsoft's campus and discussing their ideas for the future of work and software.
Microsoft hopes the investment will pay off with some insight into how their flagship Office software needs to evolve. "We want them to tell us what we don't know," said Don Rasmus, a former Giga Information Group analyst who joined Microsoft last year to head up its Information Work Vision effort.
News source: C|Net News.com
When it comes to improving the spelling checker in Word or finding new ways to draw charts in Excel, Microsoft probably has things covered.
But to figure out the broad changes needed for its venerable Office software, Microsoft is turning to an Indian medical student, an aspiring architect from Kenya and 13 other young adults from across the globe. The young people, ages 19 to 24, are part of an "Information Worker Board of the Future" that will spend this week touring Microsoft's campus and discussing their ideas for the future of work and software.
Microsoft hopes the investment will pay off with some insight into how their flagship Office software needs to evolve. "We want them to tell us what we don't know," said Don Rasmus, a former Giga Information Group analyst who joined Microsoft last year to head up its Information Work Vision effort.
News source: C|Net News.com
bah- this is crap. turns out to be b/s.
Anyway, I tried OpenOffice at least 5 times in the past..and each time, lasts from hours to a week or so.. I can never get used to it..so I am sticking with MS Office.
MS Office is not perfect, and I have to say that if their Office team doesn't improve on PC platform, I think we need to think of a way to boycott them in the future.
But the other software, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and Outlook... Microsoft wins hands down. Although OO.o calc is pretty close, it just doesn't have all the math functions that Excel has built in (but if it did, i'd probably go w/ that).
scroll down for feature requests
while you're typing, the program guesses what word you are typing and will fill in what it thinks you are typing. if the word's right you can just hit the enter key and it fills in the word and skips to the end of it.
i see, but wouldnt this get annoying for every single word you type?
rekall looks interesting. I'll try out the demo, but their pricing isn't very competative to Access. Of corse, Access isn't cross-platform. I'll just have to play around in it and see what I think.
Thanks!
i see, but wouldnt this get annoying for every single word you type?
How so? it's not like it fills in the word and takes you to the end automatically. It's just the guess highlighted in blue until you hit enter. I can't see it being annoying in any situation...but yes you can turn it off, and it's very easy to see how to.
I also think that Microsoft needs to spend more time developing web pages and flash presentations on what the bennefits of using backoffice (i know, old term) in conjunction w/ Office software. Just reading the list of things, it isn't very obvious.
I'd also like to see a "Settings Tree" in each product. A place you KNOW you will be able to find a toggle for a setting w/ a searchable interface. Right now their are a dozen different places to look and I can spend some time just running through the maze.
Well, I don't think that will happen...
Adobe and Microsoft are two big companies, and if Microsoft did that Adobe would most certainly file a suit against Microsoft...
I'm not sure if PDF is an "open" format or not, but nonetheless.
If Microsoft was a very small company, it wouldn't be such a big deal.. but it's not..
Just my 2 cents..
That could take a while....
How not to get caught abusing customer privacy, over and over and over...
How not to change your licensing plans to make yourself unpopular with 'Enterprise' customers.
How not to keep changing your minds when the wind changes direction. (IE Development)
How to make a Browser that supports common web standards and functionality.
How not to be so blatant in your attempts to tie customers in to the 'Our way' or no way system.
How to win friends and influence people without buying them out.
Oh, it's just for Office? Then let's start with those stupid 'Assistants'.
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