J U N E |
|||
| J U N E | 1 9 9 9 |
||
 |  |
|
Computing Infrastructure Support (CIS) Computing Support Request Computer Security Unix Services ISS Mercury Project |
|
Office 2000 Available, But Industry Experts Advise Holding Off on Upgrade The release this month of Microsoft's Office 2000 Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) has been greeted with more caution than enthusiasm. For example, the Gartner Group summarizes the situation by saying "While Office 2000 has impressive features, many organizations can safely bypass the expense and pain of an Office 2000 migration." Based on both outside reviews and an internal evaluation, the Lab's Computing Infrastructure Support (CIS) Department is also advising employees to take a wait-and-see approach before deciding to upgrade to the new suite. In his weekly "Personal Technology" column in the Wall Street Journal, Walter Mossberg wrote, " I've been testing Office 2000 for months now, and I believe that most individuals and small businesses that already use one of the last two versions of Office will gain little or nothing by upgrading." Yael Li-Ron, a newspaper columnist and executive editor of "PC World" says that she sees "no compelling reason to upgrade to Office 2000." Office 2000 has a number of new features, but these are primarily designed for web publishers and some compatibility issues with these features have not yet been resolved. And, there are better web publishing applications, for example Microsoft Frontpage, already available and proven. As with the new release of many software packages, other Office 2000 bugs may emerge and users who wait a few months before upgrading often have a much easier time of it. Like other large organizations dependent on personal computers, the Lab is encouraging employees to hold off on the upgrade until CIS has time to evaluate and determine the best way to incorporate the new applications into the Lab's standard software load in a way that keeps all installed software compatible. The issues are primarily with licensing agreements and using the applications for web publishing. Although the various applications in the suite will have new features, the file formats of PowerPoint, Word, and Excel have not changed, allowing for easy transferring of these file types from Office 2000, Office 97, and Office 98 for the Macintosh. The current standard versions of Microsoft Office used at the Lab are Office 97 for the PC and Office 98 for the Macintosh. "Since we do not believe any Lab user would have a compelling need for Office 2000 features, we're recommending that they wait until infrastructure support issues are worked out. In fact, we are working on them already." said Mark Rosenberg, leader of the Computing Infrastructure Technologies Group. "If any user decides to move ahead with Office 2000 now, they should expect to deal with any problems that arise." |
|
Return to Computing News |