And now Office is delayed. | The Coffeehouse

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1942069,00.asp

Microsoft will still release the Office 2007 code to manufacturing before the end of calendar 2006. But only volume licensees will be able to take delivery of the code in 2006. All other Office customers will have to wait until January 2007 to obtain Office 2007 through new PC preloads and the retail channels.

AndyC

Right so what's the bets then?

1) New activation service for Vista/Office 2007 is still too buggy

2) Somebody forgot to make sure a CD duplication plant was available

any others...

blowdart
Peek-a-boo

AndyC wrote:
Right so what's the bets then?

1) New activation service for Vista/Office 2007 is still too buggy

2) Somebody forgot to make sure a CD duplication plant was available

any others...

3) Trying to decide what gets cut.

They've already gutted Vista, seems like it's time for Office to get the same treatment.

matt0210

AndyC wrote:
Right so what's the bets then?

1) New activation service for Vista/Office 2007 is still too buggy

2) Somebody forgot to make sure a CD duplication plant was available

any others...

Actually finish a product for once before shipping it?!

Tom Servo
W-hat?

blowdart wrote:
They've already gutted Vista, seems like it's time for Office to get the same treatment.

There's nothing to cut in Office, since pretty much everything seems to work fine.

I think they want to spend more time polishing their UI.

arunpv

I believe it has to do with releasing 2 products together, just like SQL 2005 and VS2005. They want to combine Off2007 and Vista.
Microsoft has a damn good Marketing... Wink

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:
It's quite obvious what is going on, actually. It is marketing, plain and simple. They are able to deliver to volume licensed customers first. That suggests that it is not a DVD manufacturing problem. By staggering the delivery dates of the OS/Office Suite it builds momentum. They know it is going to be a hard sell to deliver as OS/Office Suite that is worthy of being XP's successor, and what better to way to keep the buzz going than by spreading out the release dates. Think of this analogy:

a) Rock star records album, but only releases single
b) Album gets released after weeks of airplay for the single
c) Rock star goes on tour

Once the tour is over, that rock star sort of fades into obscurity until the next album. The point is, the dates are spread out. Rarely does the single, album and tour occur at exactly the same time.

That's an interesting theory, but the press coverage on the Vista delay has been almost entirely negative. i.e. Microsoft screwed up. When Madonna releases a single from her upcoming new album, you don't read stories in the Wall Street Journal about how Madonna screwed up because the rest of her album is delayed.

There's a difference between Madonna doing a staggered release on purpose, and Microsoft surprising Wall Street and investors by accident.

MSFT dropped 2.3% after the announcement. That's what, a couple BILLION dollars of capitalization that went up in smoke?

Cowen & Co. estimated that the delay will cost Microsoft between $250 million and $845 million in fiscal 2007 revenue, or a penny to 5 cents a share in earnings.

(from http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20060322-000700-1001)

Sure, $845 million is cab fare to Microsoft. Still, knocking a few percent of the market cap and losing a few hundred million in revenue doesn't seem like the smartest trade for intangibles like "building momentum" and "keeping the buzz going."

mawcc
Make it so

Quoting all important paragraphs would lead to much less speculation:

"It is true that Microsoft has decided to coordinate with Windows Vista to hit retail store shelves in January 2007, but that's a reflection of the desire to provide an easy purchasing process for consumers and a simplified selling opportunity for retailers," said a company spokeswoman. "There is no slip in schedule, just a change in delivery for the benefit of consumers and retailers."

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:

Let's try this analogy: let's say Vista = Titanic. Now, if you are in charge of building the Titanic, and at the last minute you are told to add 60% more lifeboats, that would cause a delay, right? Now, let's say they add more lifeboats. Titanic ships with a boatload full of rich folk. It still hits an iceberg, but now there are more lifeboats to help the people off the sinking ship.

Analogies to the Titanic are so last year.

blatzcoder wrote:

They drift in their lifeboats until the Linux ships nearby pick them up.

There's a difference between an analogy and a mastubatory fantasy.

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:

Karim wrote: Analogies to the Titanic are so last year.
I wonder why all Beer's posts have an edit date of "Fri, Feb 24 2006 5:19 PM". That doesn't look like last year.

Link wasn't to Beer's post. Beer went back and erased all of his incriminating entries shortly before being banned -- no doubt akin to the preternatural sense of foreboding some people have prior to their deaths.

blatzcoder wrote:

Alright. let's try this. Say Vista = bottle of wine. Linux = bottle of wine. The Linux folks put out wine every year. Microsoft hopes that by waiting 60% longer, they'll have better wine. Problem is, the wine arrives in 2008, and when you open the bottle it has fermented to the point where it tastes really good going down but in the end you end up hurling it back up.

60% longer than what?

Some wines improve with age. Unlike Linux Kool-Aid.

It looks like the Linux wine industry has its own fermentation issues:

Ubuntu update hit by six week delay

blatzcoder wrote:

Oh, and can't I enjoy my afternoon tea without you making explicit references?

You're asking me what you can enjoy? Ok: YES. Big Smile

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:
I always like how ZDNet sticks a giant Microsoft ad smack in the middle of a Linux article.

ZDNet wrote: New versions of Ubuntu Linux have been released at a steady six-month intervals, but project founder Mark Shuttleworth is considering a six-week delay to improve the reliability of an important new version.
That sounds reasonable to me. Who wouldn't want more reliability? As the user base expands, it will be critical to keep addressing these issues. Six months != 4 years

So you swallow a six-week delay for Ubuntu ("Who wouldn't want more reliability?"), but you choke on a one month delay for Vista. Nice double standard.

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:

Oh, and then there is this...even Apple is losing market share now.

Art Students Switch to Linux

The article wrote: I began seriously planning this change last school year, when I realized how fully the current feature sets of free software programs could satisfy the technical needs of the students in my classes. I decided that the time had come to teach our undergraduate art students about free software programs such as the GIMP, Scribus, and Quanta Plus, instead of proprietary programs such as Photoshop, QuarkXpress, and Dreamweaver.

LOL "Ok kids! Instead learning how to use programs that are used everywhere in the real world, like Photoshop, Quark, and Dreamweaver, we're going to learn how to use GIMP, Scribus, and Quanta Plus!!! Won't that look awesome on your resume? Who needs to know nasty old Photoshop anyway!!!"

The author's resume is fun. He apparently is the author of some plug-ins for GIMP (go figure!!) and knows Doug Henning personally.

http://www.mum.edu/arts/faculty/leete.html

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:

Karim wrote: So you swallow a six-week delay for Ubuntu ("Who wouldn't want more reliability?"), but you choke on a one month delay for Vista. Nice double standard.
I already have features that Vista will *eventually* have. Features that XP does not have. So, I'm already ahead.

And this platform natively runs Photoshop? Dreamweaver? Visual Studio? Microsoft Office? No? But who needs that when you have Super Tux. You're already ahead.

Karim
Trapped in a world he never made!

blatzcoder wrote:
In other news, KDE4 (Plasma) will be out in the Fall of 2006. I'm eager to see what they have come up with.

I doubt Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat are as eager as you, since they've standardized on Gnome.

DoomBringer
Doom!

senor blatz, lets face it: Linux isn't going to get a magical windfall of users from a one month delay in these things. As sucktacular as these delays are, it isn't going to cause mass migrations. Any other perspective is fantasy.