Microsoft Accidentally Slips Office 2003 Beta Onto The Web

Internetweek.com ^ | February 20, 2003 | Techweb News

[Dont Mention the War]

Microsoft Accidentally Slips Office 2003 Beta Onto The Web

By Techweb News

Microsoft mistakenly posted the second beta of the newest Office to its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), but yanked it several hours later.

The sneak, which several users were able to download before Microsoft withdrew the posting, revealed that the suite will be called Office 2003 when it releases mid-2003, as TechWeb reported earlier.

Other tidbits gleaned from the brief appearance include the bundling -- in the beta, at least -- of the OneNote and InfoPath applications, as well as the inclusion of SharePoint Portal Server 2.0.

[Dont Mention the War]

Now available on every P2P server on the planet, I'm sure. Way to go, MS!

[RightWhale]

What happened to the price of Microsoft, MSFT, common stock?

[Dont Mention the War]

bump lists.

[Dont Mention the War]

They did a 2-for-1 stock split, either this week or last week.

[ApesForEvolution]

If you find one, let me know. I'd like to take a peek...

[SoDak]

Microsoft mistakenly posted the second beta of the newest Office to its Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN), but yanked it several hours later.

How many bugs were found?

[w_over_w]

The sneak, which several users were able to download before Microsoft withdrew the posting

So before they pulled it, was it considered a "worm virus" still in the wild?

[Dont Mention the War]

I did a cursory search (I'm a Mac guy, so it's not really a high priority for me) and didn't turn up anything. But over the next few days, it should show up on Gnutella or somewhere.

[Bush2000]

How many bugs were found?

If this article (on Beta1) is any indication, not many.

[Bush2000]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,678070,00.asp

[Bush2000]

You guys do realize it's a time-limited beta, right?

[rs79bm]

"Free bugs and viruses!" Download Beta 2003 today!

[ContentiousObjector]

I have a (Legitimate) copy of the beta, Office XP 2003 is just adding further bloat to Microsoft Office, every release of Microsoft Office since Office 97 has just been adding superficial garbage.

[Rodney King]

revealed that the suite will be called Office 2003 when it releases mid-2003,

Well there's a shocker.

[paolop]

Care to eleborate, and further break your NDA?

[NativeNewYorker]

Open office. It works! It's free!

[ContentiousObjector]

the features that are being added don't really do anything that needs to be done by 99.9% to the 8th power of users need to do.

XML might have some long term potential, but that is hardly worthy of an upgrade
MSN Instant Messanger is intergrated into Office, I don't know what kind of feature that is.

Smart Tags are all over the place, but the only time I think I have ever used those is pasting text to another document and using the smart tag to match it with the formatting of the document it was inserted into.

We have people here still using Word Perfect 3.5 For Mac and Office 97 who are doing just fine, we even have a few people using Lotus AmiPro!, your allowed to use whatever the hell you like here and eye candy really does not contribute to productivity all it does is make obsolete another generation of computers.

Microsoft Office has gone from a great productivity suite to the solution to a problem that doesn't exist,

There is nothing (that needs doing) that Microsoft Office does today that it couldn't do 6 years ago

The problem is the productivity suite kinda reached nirvana some time ago, and Microsoft doesn't want to let the golden goose die of old age.

There are going to be people running Windows and Office 2000 on Pentium II's 10 years from now, and that scares Microsoft and the rest of the industry to death.

[George W. Bush]

...every release of Microsoft Office since Office 97 has just been adding superficial garbage.

Yep. Still with '97 here. I keep looking for new and useful features in the later ones but there's nothing there that anyone really needs.

Can't understand the hoopla over newer versions.

[chilepepper]

There are now, after the split and I am NOT making this up,

10 BILLION SHARES OF MICROSOFT!!!!

[chilepepper]

the features that are being added don't really do anything that needs to be done

Hogwash! These features are crucial in making this version of Office incompatible with earlier versions so that people will be forced to upgrade to the new version and the new licensing system...