Forget the sneak peeks, work on the product. Are sneak peeks supposed to make people feel better? Sorry you can’t use the real product, but here is what you would have had but now have to wait.

So they are going to cripple Entourage then?

Seriously, it has amazed me for so long that Entourage (2004) allows more productivity than Outlook (based on user feedback) - even when connecting to an Exchange server.

before El Reg's anti-Mac brigade figure out a way to blame this on Apple, rather than crap coding from Microsoft.

Are you suggesting that only Microsoft, or only companies in Redmond, miss deadlines for software?

A one-quarter slip is hardly astonishing in this industry and not even remotely unique to Redmond.

'Melissa Stern, Office client and small business team senior product manger, promised The Register ads would be "relatively small", with relevance based on demographics.'

So how many ads are there going to be for a bald, pot-bellied, tattooed, gay, train set owning, comic book reading, ex-pat? What? Speak up now! None you say? What a surprise!

So, does that mean it was only a part-time effort previously?

I'm not sure if having the code quality closer to that of the Windows products is a good thing or not...

I wont be loosing any sleep over it. I've been using Open Office for a couple of years now. Yeah, it looks a bit ugly running under X11 but it does the job well. It is a godsend of a application if like me you flit between Window, OSX and Linux workstations.

Shouldn't the fact that it's called "Office 2008" have given a hint that it wouldn't be released in 2007?

Really, the number of people who have a good reason to care if Office isn't upgraded for a couple of more months must be vanishingly small.

The comment about quality was refreshingly candid. I'm very sceptical about the idea of an ad-funded version of Works. I am sure it will come to pass, but it sounds like a very poor idea. Notwithstanding the bother of having an advert floating on the screen all the time, I would be worried that Works might be snooping at my documents, looking for keywords (such as "incision" and "bone-on-bone") in order to send information back to Microsoft central.

I expect that Microsoft will point this out, but even if it is not the case, the suspicion will remain. Perhaps the idea is to ensure that serious or business users avoid Works like the plague, and buy Office instead. I imagine they do already. It seems odd to push Office for a Christmas release - it's not the kind of thing I want to see in my stocking, I would much rather see Gretchen Moll. In my stocking.

If only there was a free alternative - a suite of office applications that you don't have to pay for. Doesn't matter if it feels ancient and clunky. Could such a thing be? Could such a thing be?

Pillocks.

You would have thought MS would have learned from the Office 98 file change fiasco that they need the converters in place *before* they release a new product that changes the file formats.

Office 2007 has been out for 6 months now and there's no converter available on the Mac. No open=no use.

I do hope that Office 2008 isn't going to chew up screen space like its ugly older sister 2007. The 2004 interface is great - so don't mess with it.

Dealing with MS these days is like dealing with a petulant teenager; we [the customers] don't know nuffink.

At least there's one good thing about this delay: we don't have to listen to MS banging on about more useless bloated features.

> "The company blamed poor-quality coding in the product..."

Errmmmm... at Redmond, is there any other sort...? This is a SURPRISE...????

If they are looking for anything else from Microsoft coders, then Hell will freeze over before it's launched... :-(

Well, if you put a salesman in charge don't be surprised when your products become focussed on selling. Ballmer is the best friend Apple and the OSS community could possibly have.

Wonder if any CEO will try to sue MS for the lost productivity from their workers as they click away on car loan ads rather than finish this urgent-for-yesterday report...

I would give it a shot, if I had any intention of switching to -sigh- MS office

"I've been using Open Office for a couple of years now. Yeah, it looks a bit ugly running under X11 but it does the job well."

Well why not use NeoOffice instead then? It's a proper port of OOo to OS X and integrates well with the OS. Plus, it has support for docx - if that's of any use to anyone? - of course ODF is far superior.

So they havent had time to put the bugs in yet?

http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

Bill Fresher,

Maybe you should read this:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-062007OfficeRTMPR.mspx

Office 2007 was released in 2006; it wasn't called Office 2006 now was it?

Every year cars are released in September and they have the following year on them. So you can buy a 2008 in 2007.

Ok, I use OS X at home and Windows XP at work. I need a new Universal Binary version of Office for OS X because not running Intel native makes the software too damn slow.

But one feature they are dropping is the ability to run VB macros. So now all the Excel spreadsheets with custom VB that I'm required to run will no longer work on the Mac.

Here's one upgrade I won't be purchasing.

More info: http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20070123002532149

Err... apart from Excel i get by just fine using iWork and Mail for everything i need.....

Entourage is great, apart from the fact you can't move the Database under v2004 and god forbid the huge bloated file ever gets large (it never reduces in size you see) and should then corrupt. I got screwed over and moved to using Mail and am much happier, sure it's a little slower, but hey it's reliable at least! Combine it with Groupcal and you can use Exchange calender events with PC users too....