By Richard Morochove
First published June 10, 1999
Moo! Moo! If you listen closely, you can almost hear Microsoft's cash cow waddle into your local computer store. Today, June 10, MS Office 2000 becomes available to retail customers for the first time, although the suite of applications has been shipping to selected corporate users since the end of April.
Office is Microsoft's single largest source of revenues. The three-month delay in its release trimmed $400 million (U.S.) from Microsoft's third quarter results. Office 2000 arrives just in time to give a boost to Microsoft's financial results for its fiscal year ending June 30.
Does this cash cow deliver enough beef to make it worthwhile to part with some of your hard-earned money for the new suite?
I've had a chance to evaluate the final version of Office 2000 for several weeks. Overall, the biggest change in Office 2000 is its web-centric orientation. You can easily save documents in the Web's HTML format and bring in new data the same way. Microsoft uses special XML (eXtensible Markup Language) codes to add additional formatting capabilities to the industry-standard HTML codes.
If you publish a lot of information on the Web, then Office 2000 is a must-upgrade for Office 97 users. Microsoft's FrontPage web-authoring tool becomes part of the Office family, at least in some configurations of the suite. FrontPage 2000 combines the previously separate page editor and site explorer components of the program, which will make it easier for newcomers to understand.
But even Office applications such as Word and PowerPoint presentation graphics are more net-savvy than before. For example, PowerPoint lets you target specific web browsers that will view your net-published presentation.
Unfortunately, the new web translation system isn't perfect. Other programs that import HTML documents can't always make sense of the new Microsoft commands.
What else is noteworthy in the new Office? Big business will appreciate Office 2000's collaborative tools, so workgroups can use Internet Explorer 5.0 to share information. This feature is so good it may threaten the leadership of Lotus Notes groupware application.
For the first time, Microsoft seems to be taking notice of the criticism of the bloated size of its document files. Many documents converted from Office 97 to Office 2000 file format are actually slightly smaller.
Office 2000 also delivers a flu-shot for Melissa, the nasty macro virus that stung so many not so long ago. Macros can be digitally signed, so you can allow only trusted macros to operate unfettered in your system.
Office 2000 is more tightly integrated with Internet Explorer than previous versions. Users of IE 5.0 will be able to edit Office documents. That ups the ante for developers of competing application suites, such as Lotus with its SmartSuite and Corel with WordPerfect Office.
Is Office 2000 worth it? It's certainly expensive. The estimated retail price of the Premium version for new users is an eye-popping $1,229. The good news is that hardly anyone will fork over that much dough.
There are five different configurations of Office 2000. Microsoft's pricing scheme has so many twists and turns you almost need Excel's pivot table function to analyze your pricing options.
Office 2000 Premium delivers it all. You get Word, Excel spreadsheet, PowerPoint presentation graphics, Access database, Publisher desktop publishing, Outlook messaging, Microsoft Small Business Tools, Internet Explorer 5.0, FrontPage and the new PhotoDraw graphics application. The suggested upgrade price if you're using a non-Microsoft suite or application is $699. There's a $75 rebate if you're using an earlier version of an Office application, which brings your cost down to $624.
Less expensive configurations of Office eliminate some of the applications, such as FrontPage and PhotoDraw, and are available for as little as $329, after rebate, for users of earlier versions of Microsoft software.
I'm rather underwhelmed by Office 2000. It looks like Microsoft squirted a bit of spicy sauce on yesterday's burger to disguise the fact that not much has changed.
If you don't need to transfer documents to the Web, then look into the new features of the Office 2000 applications, described in detail on Microsoft's website, to see if this pricey upgrade is really worth it. In most cases, I suspect you'll find it isn't.
Is this the end of worthwhile improvements? Has Microsoft added everything it can to its Office applications?
There's plenty more Microsoft can do, but some of the most interesting technology just isn't ready yet. For example, a couple of years from now, Office will likely feature voice recognition, a significant improvement worth paying for.
Why not wait until then to release a really substantive upgrade? Microsoft needs to maintain its earnings growth. Office 2000 was released for the money, not because it was really needed. CW
Richard Morochove, FCA, is a Toronto-based computer consultant.
Copyright ©1999 by Morochove & Associates Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or distributed by any means without our prior written permission.
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