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.

[NativeNewYorker]

10.70139 billion shares, to be exact, yes.

[Petronski]

Slightly off topic, is there any way to remove the little icons from Office 2000 menus. Since I can read (!), I don't need little pictograms of the text commands, so for me all the little icons do is make the menus gigantic.

[steve-b]

Slightly off topic, is there any way to remove the little icons from Office 2000 menus. Since I can read (!), I don't need little pictograms of the text commands

Why, you insensitive clod! Where do you get off saying that only people who can read should be able to use word processing software?

[Bush2000]

There are now, after the split and I am NOT making this up, 10 BILLION SHARES OF MICROSOFT!!!!

Still pissed that you weren't smart enough to buy any 10 years ago? Here's a tissue. Have a good cry...

[DennisR]

Yes, there is: Hover the cursor over the toolbars/menus at the top of the Word window; click on the right mouse button; choose Customize; then click on the Toolbar tab. Uncheck the "Standard" selection, and they will disappear. However, be sure you want to remove the icons, because they actually save a lot of time for performing the most-used functions.

[Riley]

Open office. It works! It's free!

I am a big fan of Open Office- but I do find bugs in it from time to time. It is expected, and isn't a big issue to me.

[chilepepper]

Do the math (you can do math, can't you?)

10 billion shares @ $47/share = $470 billion dollars capitalization...

Sounds like a ponzi scheme to me...

[freedumb2003]

>>10 BILLION SHARES OF MICROSOFT!!!! <<

And 9.9 B belong to Billy boy, right?

[Petronski]

No, I don't want to delete the toolbar, I am talking about the icons that appear on the drop-down menus. If you click on file, for instance, you will see a little sheet of paper next to 'New' a little diskette next to 'Save' a little printer next to 'Print' etc., all displayed right on the drop down menu itself. They air-out the menu too much, requiring scrolling of the menus, which is very annoying.

[Bush2000]

Sounds like a ponzi scheme to me...

And quite obviously, you haven't benefited from any of that wealth creation, sour grapes boy...

[Bush2000]

I am talking about the icons that appear on the drop-down menus...

That's pretty weak. Most human beings are visual-oriented and find it easier to associate icons with specific tasks...

[PFKEY]

MSN Instant Messanger is intergrated into Office, I don't know what kind of feature that is.

All these added features are what MS biggest customer base asks for. Office and 'other' productivity suites are aimed at the business desktop not the home desktop.

[mhking]

And of course, since "validation" is included in the new version of Office, the second anyone using it logs onto the web, MS will immediately shut it down.

I'm in the midst of transitioning to Open Office - does it all, without all the MS load of used food, plus gives you full compatibility with anyone who's unlucky enough to have to stick with Micro$not.

[ContentiousObjector]

I buy hardware and software for a fortune 1000 company,

the only people who use MSN Messenger are teenagers and pedophiles trying to score with the teenagers using MSN

[PFKEY]

And what type of messeging software do these fortune 1000 companies use/purchase?

[ContentiousObjector]

We use Lotus Notes

[PFKEY]

And that would be the one I'm familiar with too. Is Sametime integrated into Lotus Notes?

Retorical question.

[Petronski]

That's pretty weak.

Weak? This isn't a criticism, it's an appeal for help.

Most people can read more quickly than they can spot an icon and interpret its intended use.

[chilepepper]

>>Sounds like a ponzi scheme to me...

>And quite obviously, you haven't benefited from any of that
>wealth creation, sour grapes boy.

Glad to see that you agree that Microsoft is a ponzi scheme...

A $470 Billion valuation of Microsoft is absurd, but goes a long way in explaining M$'s outrageous licensing (which will ultimately doom the company)

[HiTech RedNeck]

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

What burns me is why does Word 2002 always take several seconds to quit, even given that it's running on a dusty old 333 mhz, Windows 98 box. Not to write off its file... to quit after writing off the file, or even just using it to look at the file. The most I can see is that it's writing off template.dot, but that's only a relatively few kilobytes, onto a hard drive with an 8 meg cache. Can you say bloooooooooooat!