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Office '03: Users bullish, mum on upgrades

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Microsoft Office is sitting pretty. It has over 90% of market share. Office contributes to almost one thirds of the company’s total revenue. Even competitors such as Sun concede that Office is a "good product".

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The new Office 2003 has a whole lot of new features - a significant new feature is support for XML, which means that you can now save files in XML format. This might be significant for enterprise users as XML support allows for greater interoperability with CRM tools. "I’m glad they have introduced it. Open Office and Star Office has always had this feature. In fact, it is the default file format. This will also ensure interoperability with Web Services apps", says Mukesh Bansal, a developer.

There’s a totally new product called OneNote, a note-taking application. "This despite several bugs since it's brand new, OneNote has an easy online capture that includes HTML formatting and also cross-references the source page. Also supported is basic word-processing and support for simple paragraph formatting, bullets and numbering, spell checking, auto-summary, follow-up and even review", says Govind Menon in his HREF="https://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle.asp?arid=45099&way=search" of Office 2003 beta on CIOL.

Microsoft has announced that it will offer OneNote to the academic community at a lower price - $49, as compared to the standard price of $199. Microsoft has had success with the "academic offer" earlier with Windows XP at $149 for students and teachers. The scheme helped Microsoft laugh all the way to the bank. In just one year after Office XP was launched, the company sold 300,000 copies of the "academic version of Office XP" and made $43 million.

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By comparison, the full standard version has raked up 121,000 retail sales and the standard upgrade version has sold 100,000 since Office XP's release in May 2001.

"Outlook Express needed lot of improvements. I have not tried the beta version. But I would consider upgrading if Outlook Express has been improved for the better, on the security front", continues Bansal.

"I use Office 2000, and I would like the recovery feature that works so well with Word to work with Excel also. It would be a great help for my home PC where I suffer sudden power cuts. And how about Web services that can be launched from within Word or Front Page?," says Ajeet Kalra, a software consultant.

Microsoft has come under fire in recent times, for the myriad holes in Windows, which are repeatedly exploited by virus-writers. But the company receives (unexpectedly?) good feedback from enterprise users. "We are very happy with the product", says Satish Kumar, Sr. IT Manager, Volvo Systems. "There are few features that can probably be added to Power Point, which were present in our earlier Office package from Lotus. But we are very happy with MS-Office", says Anup Kumar Gupta, IT manager, Fosroc chemicals.

But the million- dollar question is, will users upgrade? Then comes the usual refrain. "No, we are happy with Office 2000. We are not looking to upgrade right now", says Satish Kumar from Volvo.

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