Joined on 02-07-2003
TechSoup Member
when is the Mac OS X version going to be available?
Hi folks,
Office 2007 is now being offered on the TechSoup Stock site!
This product is available at TechSoup for an admin fee of $20, thanks to a generous donation from Microsoft. To learn more and place your donation request:
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Office Professional Plus 2007 for US nonprofits, Canadian charities and Canadian nonprofits
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Office Professional Plus 2007 for US Public Libraries and Canadian libraries
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Office Professional Plus 2007 in Spanish
For details on eligibility requirements, read the Microsoft restrictions:
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Also, if you have purchased Office 2003 through TechSoup Stock within the past 2 years, you will be covered by Software Assurance, and eligible to upgrade to Office 2007. For details, call Microsoft at 800-248-0655 with the authorization number from your order.
Thanks,
Anne
Joined on 01-22-2007
TechSoup Member
I don't know how you calculated the ROI, but I doubt that you have any objective basis for this statement. I have used both OpenOffice and MS-Office and don't find that MS-Office would have a better ROI for us.
That being said, I presume we will be moving to MS Office 2007 sometime, not because of any real benefits, but because our director is getting on in years and thinks that the younger generation won't be able to cope with anything else.
tclaremont offered the following:
Microsoft Office at $20 provides a better return on investment than any "free" software that offers comparable capability.
Joined on 03-21-2001
Los Angeles
[font face='Comic Sans' size='3' color='Green']"absolute desire of corporate America to monopolise en-masse...."[/font]
Hey, watch it! :flaming; W invades countries for less provocation than that, and you wouldn't want to see the Gold Coast under occupation, would you? Besides the extraordinary rendition for the authors of scurrilous criticism of America, sooner or later there would be unconfirmed rumors that terrorists on surfboards were attacking the coalition of the willing, et c., and it would not be nice. You've got to be very diplomatic when confronting global monopoly powers. :wink2;
And, no, the thread is not asking for "reasons to upgrade." This thread was posed as an open question about "Are you planning to upgrade?" Promoting MS products (only reasons in favor of upgrade) is not our task, is it? (Well, maybe it is yours. :rolleyes; ) There are pros and cons, even for those who already use MS Office.
>> W invades countries for less (snip)
so moving back to the subject at hand...
Office 2007: Are you planning to upgrade?
(IMO it's reasonable to assume this question is aimed at people already using MS Office as its somewhat difficult to upgrade something you don't own in the first place :-)
We are continuing to trial O2K7 on a percentage of workstations and will likely schedule a full upgrade in the near future. We have repeatedly trialed, but continue to be unhappy with products that claim to compete with MS Office yet in truth lack many of the features we require on a daily basis (even basic day-2-day stuff like the ability to scan and OCR documents, send, receive and interface Email with other office docs, or generate project tasks and schedules etc. all still seem to be missing).
We are not unhappy with O2K3 however like tclaremont see long-term benefits in upgrading at this time. The decision in based on choosing options and solutions that meet our objectives; not the objectives of supporters or critics.
Cheers, Don
The better ROI is trivially easy to quantify when your bar is only the $20 mark.
The existence of one feature alone often makes the $20 pale in comparison to the amount of time and energy expensed in search of a workaround.
If we were faced with the profit sector's price point for MS Office I might be harder pressed to justify the expense, but at twenty bucks I would be drawn and quartered for turning it down.
Perhaps our organization uses many more MS Office tools than other organizations. That would weigh into any decision. We use Access, Powerpoint, Word and Excel on a daily basis among 40 full time users.
Every expense at a non-profit organization needs to be justified out of loyalty to your cause. When it comes time to pass the expense report to the board of directors, MS Office, at $20 a pop, is the right tool for us.
Getting back to the migration path, my initial foray into MSO07 leads me to believe that this transition might be a bit more painful than some in the past. The new user interface will boggle the mind of some of our users, but the other issue runs deeper. Namely, based on the age of our hardware, many of our machines will be replaced in 12 - 18 months. At that time they will no doubt be replaced with machines running Vista. This will be a double whammy to computerphobes as they are thrust in front of a new operating system and a new MS Office environment at the same time.
Because of this potential problem, I may choose to stagger the installation of MS Office and the introduction of Vista in a more bearable schedule. Since the reports I have heard suggest that MSO07 runs quite nicely on XP, that option sounds feasible, but will require a lot more thought on my part before I commit to that strategy.
Joined on 01-22-2007
TechSoup Member
Workarounds . . . I guess ROI depends on which program best meets your needs. If you require workarounds to get the best effect with MS-Office, then it loses the ROI battle.
I've seen both programs accomplish something easier than the other.
--Paul
Are you planning to upgrade to Microsoft's new Office 2007 productivity suite? Why or why not?
Not until the first SR1.
My general rule on all MS products: do not install until SP1 comes out. The new "features" just never seem to outweigh the inconveniences of the bugs.
No argument there, Rog.
Now is the right time for us to install it on test systems and evaluate it, though.
Assuming we dont replace any machines due to outright failure, our first "real world" cadidate will be somewhere around the fourth quarter of this year, or first quarter of 08. That should allow time for most of the real world problems to surface and at least be known, if not updated.
Due to the continuous proliferation of the internet, and the now commonplace auto-updates, waiting for fixes for serious issues is not the headache that it once was. The fourth quarter should prove to be a good timeframe.
The flip side is that Q & A on brand new software might not be as high of a priority as it once was, either. It is now generally accepted that if a bug is found we can just fix it via "auto-update"!
Joined on 04-07-2004
TechSoup Member
An important consideration for those whose nonprofits are locked into the other elephant in the software arena, i.e. Blackbaud. They don't yet support Raiser's Edge integration with Office 2007, and won't say when they will. So, all the nifty things you might want to do -- create actions from emails or word documents, export query data to excel, etc - are still problematic. our office bought 07, but those of us who use Raiser's Edge most have reverted back to 03!
Joined on 10-15-2003
TechSoup Member
If this needs to be a separate topic, OK, but a similar question is this: With the changes in UI, how much training do you expect to have to provide for your clients to get them up to speed on the new versions?
Joined on 11-03-2003
TechSoup Member
I have upgraded my Machines to Office 2007, with no problems.
Yes the UI is a paradigm shift for users and causes a big shock initially, but after about a month they wonder why it wasn't like this before.
Joined on 01-16-2007
TechSoup Member
I've already started upgrading my users as well (it was free thanks to software assurance). I just had to download a copy of office (which was legal since I owned the license to it). At first users are a little frieghtened of the ribbon. But once they've used it they love it and they say they will not go back. The new office is very nice. I would highly recommend it (especially if you have software assurance).
Nic
Hi Brigid, Nic,
It's always great to hear from people actually working through the learning-curve of deployment. Please don't hesitate to post back if you have anything to add, updates or other comments to share!
Thanks for your (and everyone's!) contributions.
Cheers, Don
Joined on 04-20-2005
TechSoup Member
I would not expect to an upgrade on the Mac OSX side until sometime in mid-2008, but last I had heard they were going to release it, which is good.