Microsoft Office XP Professional Complete package

.../> One step taken by Microsoft to try and get people to register, and also to try and reduce the amount of pirate copies in circulation, has been the fact that you must register the software to be able to use it, otherwise you will receive a nag screen every time you use Office XP and it will cease working after 50 uses. The actual registration is not that bad – all you have to do is quote a 25-figure number and in turn you receive a 25-figure ...
...otherwise to remove all formatting. Microsoft clearly sees this as an item that has a lot of potential, with Microsoft due to be releasing a Software Development Kit, so that Developers can create new smart tags.

Compatibility:

One of the first questions I ask when I install a new version of any piece of software, be it an HTML editor or an office suite, is whether files will need to be converted from existing versions ... more

The talk about Office XP and its release has dominated the IT headlines this week, with as ever mixed mumblings as to whether it is worth upgrading to or not. For most users at the moment, its prohibitive price-tag and also the fact that most people are yet to migrate to XP means that it is not top of the heap on everyone’s wish list for the time being.

Admittedly it is still early days and I have not had the chance to fully explore every package in the suite fully. But there have been a few things that have already become apparent in the three days that I have had to play around with it.

Installation:

As per Office 2000, although with further improvements, it is possible to not have to install everything at once, and to install components only as they are used, to keep the installation down. As with Office 2000, there are options to repair installations, and the Custom Installation Wizard is greatly improved, with an option to remove outdated plug-ins and add-ons as necessary, and with better multi-language support. This time though there is no option to upgrade from works to this version, so works users will need to buy the full version.

What versions are available?

Standard: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint

Professional: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access

Professional Special Edition: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, FrontPage, Publisher, IntelliMouse Explorer, Sharepoint Team Services

Developer: Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, FrontPage, Sharepoint Team Services, Developer Tools

NOTE: Although the package is called Office XP, the software versions of the individual programs are called Word 2002, Excel 2002 etc. Very confusing!

System specs:

The minimum specs for running Office XP is as follows:

OS: Windows 98 or later – minimum levels of RAM are 24Mb and 8Mb for each application running simultaneously (Windows 2000 requires 64Mb RAM + multiples of 8Mb).

Hard drive space:
Office XP Standard requires 210Mb free space
Office XP Professional/Professional Special Edition require 245Mb free space

As well as 115Mb on the hard drive with the OS on it and there is up to 50Mb of system updates for users of Win98 (including SE) necessary.

Anti-piracy measure:

One step taken by Microsoft to try and get people to register, and also to try and reduce the amount of pirate copies in circulation, has been the fact that you must register the software to be able to use it, otherwise you will receive a nag screen every time you use Office XP and it will cease working after 50 uses. The actual registration is not that bad – all you have to do is quote a 25-figure number and in turn you receive a 25-figure key in return. All you have to supply is the country you are in, although of course they’d prefer it if you gave then a whole lot more. However, quite how successful this really is, is a bit open to debate, as there were pirate copies floating around on FTP servers before the release date.

Better collaboration:

Previously it has become very confusing when multiple users are editing the same document, although this is no longer the case. One very useful feature that has been built in is the “Send for review” feature, whereby you can send a document to be shared with other people. This could be very useful for the translation and proof-reading work I do where I often receive revised versions of documents for translation, whilst I am working on the translation.

Task panes:

Task panes are a new innovation, with for example the clipboard task pane, which can now hold 24 clipboard items rather than the 12 that were possible in Office 2000. Task Panes appear on the right-hand side of the application window, and are intended to help you perform common tasks (like formatting tasks or file searching), although I also find that they offer options for less common tasks, such as Clippit (aka Mr. PaperClip) or the other office assistants were wont to do (i.e. do you want to do a mailmerge etc.). However they are less obtrusive that the Office Assistants were – after all everyone wanted to bend Clippit until he snapped, and used to get annoyed when he came up with “You look as if you are typing a letter… - Should I bollocks it all up for you” or something similar. Some task panes are available across the whole suite of packages, whilst others are only available in certain packages. The Search Task Pane is a lot better than previous search facilities, with it now being possible to search folders of files, items in Outlook or web-pages as well as a lot more.

Smart tags:

Smart tags actually appear as buttons within the main window of the file you are working on, one of the best things being that when copying and pasting you can choose for example to keep its source formatting, to apply a standard format or otherwise to remove all formatting. Microsoft clearly sees this as an item that has a lot of potential, with Microsoft due to be releasing a Software Development Kit, so that Developers can create new smart tags.

Compatibility:

One of the first questions I ask when I install a new version of any piece of software, be it an HTML editor or an office suite, is whether files will need to be converted from existing versions or whether they will be readable by friends who are yet to migrate. Obviously with the volume of files I produce (a few gigs a year) this is less of an issue than companies who get through terabytes of data a year. The answer to this question is that only Access 2002 uses the existing file formats that are present in Office 97 or Office 2000. With Access 2002 there is the option to use MHTML – a web archive format which saves files as MIME-encapsulated HTML, complete with any embedded objects. This gets round the limitations shown by the “Save as HTML…” option that was present in Office 2000 which used to precipitate big problems in Win ME or 2k if the files were then manipulated. MHTML may finally prove to be a viable unified file format for all office applications.

Recovery:

If you got the blue screen of death, or your computer froze, crashed, hung or played silly buggers, there was an automatic recovery option next time you started Office 2000, but it was cumbersome and not always that efficient or that successful.

If an Office XP app crashes, then you are now prompted to save your work before the application shuts down – although I have yet to test its full potential (hopefully I won’t have to!) and there is then the opportunity to report the problem to Microsoft and the application will then automatically restart. Error reports can in the cases of large companies be switched to go to the IT department rather than going to Microsoft. Apparently when bugs are fixed, you are then notified of patches etc. if you submit the reports, although it is not compulsory to report them.

Prices:

According to dabs.com – where I would probably head for, if buying in the UK XP can be picked up for the following prices:

Standard £369+VAT (£433.57 inc VAT) - Upgrade Version £169+VAT (£198.57 inc VAT)

Professional £465+VAT (£546.37 inc VAT) - Upgrade Version £229+VAT (£269.07 inc VAT)

Developer £639+VAT (£750.82 inc VAT)

Worth the upgrade:

To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have got this if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was offered to me as a perk of doing some translation for a company. For the home user, the outlay is too high, even with the Upgrade prices to consider for many, and the difference is not going to be noticeable for many home users. I would also wait for a while as there are bound to be a lot of bugs that need fixing. Office 2000 will continue to be sold for the while and there is no real reason why you must upgrade now, although I am enjoying discovering its new features and it is an improvement on what was despite what I think of Microsoft still the best office software around. I am very happy to see Clippit being given his marching orders though!
 

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