November 23rd, 2009

Office Starter 2010: The fine print on Microsoft's Works replacement

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 7:33 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Office, Office 2010/Office 14

Tags: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Works, Office Starter 2010, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

More information is coming in from various testers regarding the Office Starter 2010 build that Microsoft released to a group of selected testers late last week.

Office Starter 2010 is the Microsoft-designated replacement for its Microsoft Works product. Starter will be a low-end, free (but ad-supported) bundle of Word and Excel.

One (of many) criticisms of Works was that it didn’t support all the same file types as Microsoft Office did, making Works only somewhat compatible with Office. It looks like that same limitation will be present in Office Starter, based on a frequently-asked questions document from Microsoft that one tester forwarded to me. From that FAQ document:

Q: There is a file I can open in Excel or Word that I cannot open in Excel Starter or Word Starter, why?

A: Excel Starter and Word Starter do not support exactly the same file sets.  The following file types cannot be opened in Office Starter: .xla, .xlam, .dsn, .mde, .accde, .odc, and .udl.

Also, add-ins and macros are only marginally supported in Office Starter 2010. According to Microsoft, Office Starter does not support add-ins and will not load them. From the FAQ:

Q: Files have macros, but they cannot be run in Excel Starter or Word Starter, why?

A: Office Starter does not support the creation, editing, or running of macros. However, if a document with a macro is opened in Starter, the macro remains as part of the file.

Another often-glossed-over point regarding Office Starter is how it will be made available. It will be an OEM-only product and not available for download. Again, from the Microsoft FAQ:

Q: How will I be able to get the released version of Office Starter?

A: Office Starter will only be available as pre-loaded software on select new PCs pre-loaded with the Office suites.

As testers noted last week, there’s a new Office-to-Go feature in the Office Starter product that allows users to take their Starter copies (and associated documents) with them on a USB drive. But that feature only works on Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 machines. Since Starter is an OEM-only product that will be preloaded on new PCs, it makes sense it won’t work on XP machines, as OEMs are phasing out XP support (the last bastion for XP — netbooks — won’t be supported after next spring).

What do you think of these Office Starter 2010 limitations? Are any of them onerous enough to make Starter a non-starter?

November 20th, 2009

Office Starter 2010 private beta, with 'Office to GO,' goes to testers

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:21 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, Office Live Workspace, PDC 2009, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Beta, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft released a bunch of public betas of various Office 2010 products this week. But it also released another one under non-disclosure to a select group of testers: Office Starter 2010.

Microsoft made the code for Office Starter 2010 available to select testers via its Connect Web site late this week. Office Starter 2010, as Microsoft officials have disclosed previously, Office Starter 2010 is the replacement for Microsoft Works. It will be free and ad-supported, includes Word and Excel only and allows only basic document viewing and editing.

There’s one new feature in Office Starter 2010 that I had not heard about previously. It’s called “Office to GO,” according to testers with whom I spoke, who asked not to be named. Office to GO is installed using the Click-to-Run setup that is part of Office 2010. (Click to Run is one of the new ways Microsoft is planning to distribute the Office 2010 bits. It streams the bits onto a user’s PC using virtualization technology so that users can be up and running with Office more quickly than if they had to wait for the entire product to download.)

The Office to GO application allows users to download Word Starter, Excel Starter and any related documents to a USB drive that users can then run onany  Windows Vista Service Pack 1 or Windows 7 PC, according to the aforementioned tester.

Office Starter 2010 also includes a permanent sidebar that includes links to a Gettting Started guide, help and support, templates and clip art, and an “upgrade to a paid version now” (with PowerPoint and/or Outlook) setting. Here’s what that sidebar looks like (click on the image to enlarge):

I’ve asked Microsoft for more details about Office to GO and will add anything I get back to this post.

Update (November 23): Here’s the statement I received from a Microsoft spokesperson regarding my questions on Office to GO:

“Office Starter To-Go is a product where Office Starter users can create a USB device that temporarily enables them to use Word Starter and Excel Starter on another PC on as long as the USB device is plugged in.  The technology used by Office Starter To-Go, is similar to how “Click-to-Run” works in that the USB device is being used as the server for a version of Starter on the device.  When the device is removed from a PC, Office Starter To-Go is also removed. Starter To-Go is only part of Office Starter edition that is pre-installed on new PC’s.  It cannot be installed on a separate PC, but it gives our customers the ability to take their Office with them and use it on any PC to open and work with their Word and Excel documents.”

Meanwhile, in other Office 2010 news from this week, I have a bit of additional information about the Office Web Apps public beta that Microsoft released to testers this week.

As Microsoft officials have said before, Office Web Apps — the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — will be available in three versions. One will be free and ad-supported and aimed at consumers. The consumer version, which is tied to Microsoft’s SkyDrive, is what Microsoft released as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build to selected testers this past summer. Microsoft officials told me this week that the final version of the free Office Web Apps product will be released in conjunction with Windows Live Wave 4 (which sounds as if it is a “spring 2010″ kind of thing).

There also are going to be two business-focused versions of Office Web Apps that are going to be available as paid subscription offerings: One that will be available to enterprise customers to run on-premises and one that will be hosted by Microsoft. The beta that went out this week is the on-premises business version of the Office Web Apps release. To be clear: It’s not the updated beta version of the consumer test build that Microsoft released earlier this fall. (It sounds like the consumer version of Office Web Apps may not get a new public build refresh before it is released in final form this spring.)

The business versions require SharePoint Server on the back end. Microsoft’s Office Web Apps team did a blog post earlier this week explaining more about the Office Web Apps-SharePoint tie-in. That post includes this diagram:

I’m interested in hearing more from anyone who’s test-driving the new Office Web Apps beta and/or Office Starter 2010. How are the products shaping up? What’s working or not for you?

November 18th, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 public betas now available for download

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:11 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, SharePoint Server

Tags: Public Beta, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Content Management, Microsoft Office, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Software

Microsoft released on November 18 the public beta of Office 2010. It can be downloaded by anyone for free, as of 1 pm ET today.

Microsoft is making available several different versions of Office, as well as a beta of SharePoint Server 2010 to interested testers, includingMicrosoft Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 and Office Web Apps (the on-premise, business version that is tied to SharePoint Server, not the consumer one that is connected to SkyDrive). The betas are available at www.microsoft.com/2010.

Microsoft made the Office 2010 beta bits available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers for download on November 16.

Microsoft is aiming to launch the final version of all of these Office products, as well as SharePoint 2010 by May/June 2010.

Update: Microsoft also released a beta today of Office Mobile 2010. That beta — for a slimmed-down version of Office that runs on Windows Mobile — can be downloaded it through the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

Update No. 2: The Office team also made good on its hints that it would deliver some kind of new social-networking capability to the product. From the Office 2010 Engineering blog:

“The New Outlook Social Connector brings your communications history, business and social networking feeds right into Outlook, helping you quickly keep track of conversations and stay up-to-date with co-workers, friends and family without switching programs or changing your routine. Today’s beta supports SharePoint social networking and will support Windows Live when Office launches. The business networking site LinkedIn will be the first to provide a connector for the Outlook Social Connector early next year.”

More details on that Connector are available on the Outlook blog. LinkedIn is being integrated into the public beta of Microsoft Outlook 2010. Users will be able to maintain their LinkedIn contacts and stay up-to-date on their activities inside their Outlook inbox using the new Social Connector.

November 18th, 2009

Microsoft PDC Live Blog Day Two: IE, Silverlight 4.0 and more

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:17 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Internet Explorer, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, PDC 2009, Silverlight (wpf/e)

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Keynote, Blog, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Blogging, Web Browsers, Microsoft Office, Operating Systems

The second day of keynotes at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference is about to begin, and expectations are running high that MIcrosoft might share some details on what’s coming with Internet Explorer 9, Silverlight 4 and Office 2010 Beta 2 today.

A bunch of us Microsoft bloggers will be live blogging this morning’s keynote, which are expected to feature Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President of Office Kurt DelBene, .Net Corporate Vice President Scott Guthrie and more.

Join in with us on CoverItLive and discuss the keynotes live, starting at 8:30 am PT, along with ZDNet’s Ed Bott, LiveSide’s Kip Knicksern, Within Windows’ Rafael Rivera, Windows Supersite’s Paul Thurrott, istartedsomething’s Long Zheng and myself.

November 16th, 2009

Office 2010 Beta downloadable by MSDN, Technet subscribers today

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:50 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, PDC 2009, SharePoint Server

Tags: Microsoft Developer Network, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Microsoft TechNet, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

As widely expected, Microsoft has begun rolling out the public beta of its Office 2010 suite this week.

On November 16, Microsoft made the beta code available to subscribers to its MSDN and TechNet services. Microsoft is expected to open up the beta, so that anyone who’d like to try it can download it — possibly this week (though Microsoft officials refused to confirm that when I asked them today).

Microsoft also has made the 64-bit Beta version of Office Web Apps — its Web-centric versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers today. (No word yet if/when the 32-bit version of Office Web Apps will appear on MSDN/TechNet). The public also is expected to get the refreshed Office Web Apps bits, possibly this week. Again, Microsoft officials won’t confirm the public availability date, beyond saying it will be “in November.”

Microsoft has set up a download page from which the public will be able to download the Beta bits. On that page, Microsoft lists as the versions it will make available the Office Home and Business 2010; Office Professional 2010 and Office Professional Plus 2010 versions of the product.

Among the noticeable changes between the beta and the Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of Office 2010 that Microsoft released this summer are the new installation procedures for the beta build, a new Upload Center, modifications to the Backstage view; and new icons for all the Office products that are part of the suite, according to a post on the Redmond Pie blog.

Last week, a build of Office 2010 build that was marked “Beta 2″ leaked to the Web. That build was number 14.0.4514.1009. Microsoft officials told me that the leaked build was not the same one as would be released later this month.

Many Microsoft watchers are expecting the company to make the public beta bits available on November 18, as that is the day that one of Microsoft’s Office big-wigs, Senior Vice President Kurt DelBene, is keynoting the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. Given that Microsoft often releases bits to MSDN and TechNet subscribers anywhere from a couple of days to a week-plus before it makes them available to the public, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the public Office 2010 and Office Web Apps Beta 2s to go live this week.

Microsoft is expected to launch the final version of Office 2010 client, Office Web Apps and SharePoint Server 2010 in May/June 2010.

I’d like to hear what folks think of the Beta once they’ve had a chance to download and try out the client and Office Web Apps versions both. What is new and different?

November 16th, 2009

Microsoft makes available new high performance Windows Server test build

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 10:00 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Corporate strategy, OEMs, Office 2010/Office 14, Red Dog, Resellers, System builders, Utility/cloud computing, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server"), Windows server

Tags: Microsoft Windows Server, High-performance, Server, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Supercomputing, HPC Server, Leadership, Management

Microsoft made available on November 16 a code-complete beta of Windows HPC (High Performance Computing) Server 2008 R2 to selected testers.

The company made the announcement at the Supercomputing 2009 show in Portland, Oreg., where officials said they planned to provide all of the 4,500 or so of the attendees with the bits today. Microsoft also will be providing select testers with access to the downloadable beta via the Connect site today. Microsoft is expecting to release at least one more beta of HPC Server 2008 R2 before rolling out the final version some time in 2010.

HPC Server enables cluster supercomputing on x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 R2. The new release that is in testing is Microsoft’s third iteration of the product.

With the HPC Server 2008 R2 beta, testers can run the test builds of Excel 2010 and Visual Studio 2010, supporting the development and use of parallel and scalable applications, Microsoft officials said.

Microsoft and its partners have been making a concerted effort to increase the appeal of its HPC Server product beyond the small segment of scientists and engineers who typically use supercomputers. Last week, Dell announced it would be the exclusive distributor of the Cray CX1 supercomputing workstation, which runs Windows 7 integrated with HPC Server on a single box.

“We’re trying to make HPC more mainstream and accessible” to more engineers, financial quants and others in a variety of large and mid-size organizations, said Vince Mendillo, Microsoft Senior Director of High Performance Computing. To do this, the team is focused on providing new tools and techniques making HPC Server easier to set up and deploy, Mendillo said.

When Microsoft introduced the first version of HPC Server, Linux dominated the supercomputing market. Since then, Microsoft has been making inroads in market share and performance. Last year, Microsoft added “thousands of customers in large scale organizations” for the product, Mendillo said. (He declined provide any more specific data.) Microsoft now has 159 independent software vendor partners developing applications for HPC Server, Mendillo added.

Because HPC Server is part of the overall Windows Server family, MIcrosoft will fold back into the core Windows Server codebase new developments made by the HPC team. Mendillo said that some of the new parallel enhancements in the new HPC Server release would likely be useful to the Windows Azure team, which is building MIcrosoft’s cloud-computing offering.

November 13th, 2009

Office 2010 Beta 2 bits leak to the Web

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:44 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, Office Live Workspace, PDC 2009, SharePoint Server

Tags: Web, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Beta, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft has been having a tough time keeping its Office 2010 bits from leaking.

On November 13, the Professional Plus version of the next version of Microsoft’s productivity suite leaked again. The version that is making its way over the torrents is marked as Beta 2, according to the Neowin.net site, and is build number 14.0.4514.1009.

Microsoft officials have said they plan to release public beta builds of Office 2010 client, Office Web Apps and SharePoint Server 2010 in November. Many company watchers are expecting Microsoft to make those bits available next week, in conjunction with the company’s Professional Developers Conference. (Microsoft also could share details about its Office Mobile 2010 at the PDC next week, as well, I hear.)

(I’ve asked Microsoft whether the leaked build is the actual Beta 2 build the company is planning to distribute this month. No word back so far.) A spokesperson said thes newly leaked bits are not the Beta 2 ones, and added “Microsoft has not released the official beta code and recommends that people do not download code from unauthorized sources.”)

According to Neowin, the differences between the leaked Beta 2 build and the current Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of Office 2010 that Microsoft made available to select testers this summer aren’t huge. The interface has been “refined” and the program icons updated, Neowin notes.

Testers with whom I’ve spoken are most interested in seeing the new features and changes that Microsoft plans to make available as part of the Office Web Apps with Beta 2. (The Office Web Apps Beta 2 bits are not part of what leaked this week.) The first test build of Office Web Apps was rough and didn’t include OneNote Web App at all. Microsoft officials have said they’ll have more to say about how and when Office Web Apps — the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — will be able to be accessed via mobile phones around the time the company releases the public beta.

In other Office 2010 news from earlier this week, Microsoft has begun signing up testers for the free Office Starter 2010 release.

Update: Blogger Long Zheng has information on some of the changes Microsoft is making to the Office.com online portal, which is now in beta, that Microsoft also is likely to be showing off at the PDC next week.

November 12th, 2009

PDC 2009: Tune in for our live blogging frenzy next week

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:31 am

Categories: .Net Framework, Azure, Corporate strategy, Development tools, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Big Brains, Multicore/distributed computing, Office 2010/Office 14, PDC 2009, Red Dog, Research, Silverlight (wpf/e), Utility/cloud computing, Virtualization, Visual Studio 10 ("Hawaii"), Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 /("Windows 7 Server")

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Professional Developers Conference Keynote, Blogging, Internet, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 kicks off the week of November 16. Like we did last year, a handful of us Microsoft watchers will be live blogging the keynotes as a group.

The PDC keynotes are slated for Tuesday November 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT and Wednesday November 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. We’ll be using CoverItLive to blog, so the more of you who chime in and comment along with us, the merrier. Your group-blogging hosts (besides me) will be Ed Bott, Kip Kniskern, Paul Thurrott, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren and Long Zheng

Come back here next week and watch along with us as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie; Server and Tools President Bob Muglia; Kurt DelBene, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Office Business Productivity Group and more talk about what’s coming for developers in the next year. (I’ll post the CoverItLive viewer on my site during keynote viewing hours next week.)

There will be new info on Microsoft’s Azure cloud operating environment, .Net 4.0, Oslo, Office 2010, Silverlight, SQL Server and more. And more than a few of the “Big Brains” — Microsoft’s Technical Fellows — are on tap to present during the four-day confab.  I’ve already posted about some of what’s on tap (and not on tap) for PDC 2009 over the past few weeks. Expect lots more PDC news on my blog throughout the week next week.

Hope to see you (virtually) and/or live in Los Angeles next week!

November 12th, 2009

Microsoft lines up testers for free Office Starter 2010 product

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:31 am

Categories: Apple, Corporate strategy, Google, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, Office Live Workspace, Open source, SharePoint Server

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Office Starter 2010, Potential Tester, Microsoft Office, Office Suites, Software, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is soliciting existing Office Live Workspace users to be part of a pool of testers for its forthcoming, free (but ad-supported) Office Starter 2010 product.

The ithinkdiff.com enthusiast site has posted a copy of the Office Starter 2010 invitation that Microsoft has sent out. Potential testers are asked to commplete a survey, which includes questions about the personal productivity applications and services they currently use. On the list are Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Apple’s iWork, Microsoft Works, Open Office and Microsoft Office.

In spite of its name, Office Starter 2010 really has little resemblance to Windows 7 Starter Edition. Office Starter 2010 is a new version of Microsoft’s Office suite that is expected to launch in May/June 2010. Office Starter will bundle together stripped-down versions of Word and Excel only, Microsoft officials said in October. (Stripped-down here means basic document viewing and editing only.) Starter will be ad-supported and free. Microsoft is positioning Office Starter as a replacement for the Microsoft Works trial that is often preloaded on new PCs.

Microsoft officials also said recently that Microsoft is planning to phase out Office Live Workspace, the company’s existing add-on to Office that allows users to share and collaborate on documents over the Web. Office Web Apps, another of Microsoft’s new Office SKUs being introduced in 2010, is the natural successor to Office Live Workspace.

Microsoft officials have said the company is planning to field a public beta of Office 2010 in November. Many are expecting that beta to be opened up next week, in conjunction with Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC). Microsoft is  on tap to make available public betas of Office 2010, Office Web Apps, SharePoint Server 2010. Microsoft also may show off the Office Mobile 2010 product, a version of Office for mobile phones, next week as well.

November 5th, 2009

Microsoft to add SharePoint access to Live@edu

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:33 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Exchange Server, Google, Office, Office 2010/Office 14, Office Live, SharePoint Server, Utility/cloud computing, Web conferencing

Tags: Microsoft SharePoint, Web Application, Microsoft Corp., Live@edu, Content Management, Collaboration, Groupware, Enterprise Software, Microsoft Office, Software

Paving the way for its Office Web Apps rollout, Microsoft is adding SharePoint Online to the services it offers students and academics as part of its Live@edu offering.

Microsoft made the announcement at the Educause conference in Denver, according to a posting on the Live@edu blog. The SharePoint Online service should be available to Live@edu subscribers for no additional cost some time next year.

Microsoft officials played up both the collaboration and conferencing capabilities and the Office Web Apps access as being behind the planned addition. Students and educators are a big audience for Google Docs and expected to be one of Microsoft’s biggest group of initial adopters of Office Web Apps.

From the November 3 Live@edu blog post:

“In conjunction with the Live@edu program, we will be bringing a solution to market for students, based on SharePoint Online, for free. So what does that mean? Well, lets look at some possibilities:

“* Work with a class group on a research assignment – documents, background research, project plans can all be stored online and worked on from anywhere.
“* Office Web Apps support means that a user can access Office files on almost any machine to simply view the content, or to make essential modifications.
“* Microsoft Office integration ensures they get a rich, integrated experience with SharePoint Online and the Office Web Apps, if required… and of course offline access to files.”

Microsoft officials have said they plan to offer three different modes of distribution for Office Web Apps — Microsoft’s Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote — due out by mid-2010. There will be a free, consumer-focused version that will be accessible via Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive service. There also will be two paid versions for business customers: A Microsoft-hosted version and an on-premises, user-hosted version. The two hosted versions will require SharePoint/SharePoint Online as part of the back-end infrastructure.

Microsoft already offers hosted Exchange email, among other Microsoft services, to Live@edu subscribers. The Exchange Online version for students/academics is known as “Outlook Live.” There’s no word yet on how Microsoft will rebrand the SharePoint Online offering that will be available via Live@edu.

(Hat tip to Network World for the heads-up on the SharePoint and Live@edu news.)