Bloated Office 2010 kicks dirt in face of old computers
Features-heavy suite piles on CPU, RAM pounds
Posted in Management, 25th January 2010 12:08 GMT
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Microsoft has confirmed that the upgrade path from Office 2003 to its upcoming Office 2010 suite won’t necessarily be an easy one for customers to follow.
The software maker said on Friday that PCs capable of running Office 2007 would be able play nice with Office 2010.
However, punters still using Office 2003 won’t have quite such an easy ride, as Microsoft cannot guarantee they’ll automatically be able to run Office 2010 on the same hardware.
Redmond said the 32-bit version of Office 2010 would run on Windows XP SP3, Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 R2. The 64-bit flavour of the Office apps suite will work on all 64-bit versions of the same operating systems, with the exception of Windows Server 2003 R2.
But depending on what computer a customer is running those operating systems on, an upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2010 may be a painful process.
“CPU and RAM requirements approximately doubled between Office 2003 and Office 2007,” noted Microsoft’s Alex Dubec.
“We haven’t changed the CPU or RAM requirements from Office 2007, but the footprint of most Office applications have gotten larger. These changes force us to increase the system requirements - most standalone application disk-space requirements have gone up by 0.5 GB and the suites have increased by 1.0 or 1.5 GB.”
Dubec said that the addition of features such as the much-derided arrival of the Ribbon, along with the 64-bit Office’s debut among other things has beefed up that footprint considerably.
He also reaffirmed that Office 2010 didn’t represent a major release for Microsoft, in part to ensure an easier transition from Office 2007 - if not Office 2003.
The trouble is that many customers remain on Office 2003. So when it comes to upgrading their suite, they might well have a battle on their hands that could culminate in ditching old hardware in favour of something more compatible with Office 2010.
Dubec acknowledged that Microsoft was aware of the grumbles.
“One of the pieces of feedback we’ve received from customers is that they really, really hate having to buy new hardware every time a new version of Office is released. With that in mind, one of our goals for the Office 2010 was to make sure that the minimum hardware requirement would not increase from Office 2007,” he said.
There were significant changes in the code between Office 2003 and Office 2007 in the areas of installation and customisation, file format, security, interface, and object model that affected Outlook, Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote - all of which are apps used extensively by business customers.
“We invested in improving the customer experience on minimum-requirement hardware, and we regularly tested performance throughout the development cycle. Our footprint has gotten larger since Office 2007, but we’re proud to say that we’ve succeeded in keeping the CPU and RAM requirements the same as for Office 2007.”
Sadly, making the leap from Office 2003 to Office 2010 - which Microsoft plans to release in June this year - might not prove so easy. ®
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COMMENTS
Bloated to astonishing levels
It's truly astounding how Microsoft Office keeps getting more and more bloated, to extraordinary levels, making everyone purchase more powerful PCs just to run the thing.
Remember, this is only a word processor / office app. It's not calculating weather simulations or 3D renderings. It's only doing simple office tasks. Yet still it keeps getting bigger, for nothing!
It does not need to
It does not need to. Look at the definition of symbiosis on Wikipedia.
By adding visual candy and raising the hardware requirements regularly they give the punter a perception that their machine is slow. For about 98% of the users this means buying a more powerful machine which includes a _NEW_ license to the same Microsoft products he has been using with the old one (possibly slightly newer versions for some of them, but overall same products none the less).
So Microsoft is happy as a result, vendors are happy as a result. And the remaining 2% of users are also happy as a result as well while typing this on a circa 2003 1.4MHz P3 (in a new quiet case with a proper video card) running Linux. Everyone except the main 98% of consumers will be happy laughing all the way to the bank.
This is something the DOJ noticed with the first anti-trust lawsuit against MSFT. However it failed to address it correctly at the time and that failure has been fundamental to Microsoft becoming unmovable in its dominant position in the IT ecosystem. It suits everyone.
It will also stop the moment licenses become transferrable via an approved scrappage scheme and Microsoft starts getting money only for goods it has really delivered on each real upgrade cycle. Similarly in this case Microsoft monopoly will naturally disappear unless they really innovate.
However neither the DOJ, nor the EU have the guts to do that.
All you Microsoft bashers!
Shameless pricks! Found an easy target, you think!
Look again - I'm absolutely sure that the new upgraded version will still screw up bullet points when you add paragraph numbering or vice versa.
I am equally sure that it will still randomly make your text very very small but bold and italic when you occasionally delete a blank line at the end of a paragraph.
There will still be empty lines which you cannot delete no matter what (even if you turn display of hidden characters ON).
So, you see? All the same functionality is preserved! Just buy a bigger computer and shut up!
Pointless
Every version since Office 2000 has been a pointless, expensive, resource - hogging disaster. There is nothing in the new version that makes it even a desirable upgrade, certainly not a 'must have'
Hello,
it looks like you're performing an upgrade...
Would you like me to:
1 Make a mess of it
2 Re-format your hard disk
3 Stick with the previous version,
4. No thanks, Ive been fucked over before
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