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Microsoft announces Office v. X is complete

updated 09:05 am EDT, Wed October 24, 2001

Microsoft today officially announced Office v. X has gone "GM" (golden master) and is being delivered to manufacturers in preparation for the launch on November 19th. The $500 application suite will be available as a $300 upgrade to previous owners, while users who purchase Office 2001 (or any component application) between now and Dec 31, will receive a free upgrade to the OS X version (of the appropriate package). The company also announced that over 90,000 users downloaded Word X Test Drive, its preview release of the popular word processing application. Pre-orders for Office v. X are available online from a number of resellers.

by MacNN Staff

(28)

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\0

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10/24, 09:20am | report spam | close Reply | delete
free upgrade

nice of them...not what I would expect...

Joined:

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10/24, 09:36am | report spam | close Reply | delete
nice

look at the pics and the features of all the Office X apps, they're awesome. Excel is evn integrated with realBasic.

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10/24, 09:50am | report spam | close Reply | delete
upgrade price

I seem to remember that there was supposed to be an upgrade price of $ 149 for owners of Office 2001 - do I remember wrongly? or have they changed policies?

karl

\0

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10/24, 10:06am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Cool

This means I should have my copy off Carracho in a day or so

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10/24, 10:17am | report spam | close Reply | delete
RE: Upgrade Price

I remember the same thing. Didn't Steve announce it at one of his keynote speaches? I am pretty sure about the $149 thing.

I can't find anything about it either...

Zach

\0

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10/24, 10:21am | report spam | close Reply | delete
You're Right Karl....

Previous messaging was that there would be a "special/limited" upgrade pricing of $149 only available from Microsoft. The only reference to $149 I see now is the individual modules.

Joined:

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10/24, 10:21am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Upgrade price

Never mind... I found it.

Pricing and availability
The Office v. X upgrade price is $299 (U.S.); the full price of the suite is $499 (U.S.). These are estimated retail prices; reseller pricing will vary. Users who have purchased Office 2001 for Mac, Word + Entourage 2001 Special Edition�, or any individual Office 2001 for Mac application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint), can upgrade to Office v. X for the special upgrade price of $149. This special upgrade price will be offered for a limited time and will only be available directly through Microsoft. The special offer is not applicable for institutional purchases made through Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs. Check back here for details on fulfillment on November 19, 2001.

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/officex/prodinfo/t_upgrade.asp#retail

\0

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10/24, 10:29am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Word + Entourage?

I hope they offer a Word + Entourage X package ... I don't really want to spend $500 since I don't use Excel or PowerPoint. I could buy the 2001 special edition for $150 and upgrade for another $150, but even that seems like a lot.

nemesys
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 1999

0

10/24, 10:34am | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Upgrade Price

$300 to have the 2001 suite ported to OS X and icons being redesigned for Aqua? That's a ripoff! I've been using a copy of the GM (quite stable, actually), and never found anything in it that wasn't already in 2001. So, people are expected to pay $300 to get the OS X version of an existing program. That's outrageous!

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10/24, 10:43am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Upgrade Price

So can anyone find out HOW to place an order for $149? Doesn't appear to be any way to do so on the MS site...

pastusza
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Nov 1999

0

10/24, 10:54am | report spam | close Reply |
Using theGM?

Since the thing just went GM today, I really doubt you have been using as Gold Master build of Office v.X. Perhaps a late beta, which may or may not show how well the product will be in the GM.. Big question is:

ARE LONG FILE NAMES SUPPORTED???

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10/24, 11:00am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Upgrade Price

Re: nothing new in Office X. How about noncontiguous select in Word? This is something I use ALL the time in Nisus Writer. I'm happy to see that it's finally in Word.

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10/24, 11:02am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Upgrade Price

Re: nothing new in Office X. How about noncontiguous select in Word? This is something I use ALL the time in Nisus Writer. I'm happy to see that it's finally in Word.

awkdade
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2001

0

10/24, 11:39am | report spam | close Reply |
PowerPoint

While Microsoft seemed to do at least some upgrades to Word and Excel, PowerPoint SUCKS. It doesn't have any of the new features PowerPoint XP does.

guest
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

0

10/24, 12:12pm | report spam | close Reply |
pp xp

such as....?

Joined:

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10/24, 01:04pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Upgrade Prices

If you already own Office 2001, or any Component of it your Price is $149 for the full version.

If you own a version of Office earlier than 2001, then your upgrade cost is $300

If you go out and buy a copy of Office 2001 today or until Dec 31st, then you will get the Office v.X upgrade for Free.

--
I am going to wait until the end of the year, and see if anyone will be selling Office 2001 for a discounted price and then get the upgrade for free.

chrisridd

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10/24, 01:20pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Re: Upgrade Pricing

I found a web page at Microsoft's UK site explaining how to upgrade from 2001:

Here's the link

rmobrien
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Joined: Aug 2001

0

10/24, 01:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
How to Upgrade for $149

The last sentence below says details on the $149 price will be available on the MicroSoft site on Nov 19th:

The Office v. X upgrade price is $299 (U.S.); the full price of the suite is $499 (U.S.). These are estimated retail prices; reseller pricing will vary. Users who have purchased Office 2001 for Mac, Word + Entourage 2001 Special Edition�, or any individual Office 2001 for Mac application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint), can upgrade to Office v. X for the special upgrade price of $149. This special upgrade price will be offered for a limited time and will only be available directly through Microsoft. The special offer is not applicable for institutional purchases made through Microsoft Volume Licensing Programs. Check back here for details on fulfillment on November 19, 2001.

�

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10/24, 01:56pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
new stuff

actually, maccentral has a pretty good article with what's new.

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/24.office.php

\0

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10/24, 02:45pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT

FROM A FELONOUS MONOPOLY?

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10/24, 04:07pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
NO LONG FILE NAMES

I would expect not, since it's a carbon app and not cocoa.

awkdade
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2001

0

10/24, 05:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
PowerPoint XP does more

Features on XP that appear not to be supported by PowerPoint for X:
1) Mulitple animations at the same time
2) Motion paths for animations.
3) New Entry and Exit animations that come with XP PowerPoint

\0

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10/24, 05:29pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
$149 upgrade only if...

you bought office 2001 between september 1st and claim to redeem by November 30th. Not only that, you need the original sales receipt, not just the coupon.
Im screwed, and annoyed by this. Sales receipt went to expenses claim, and I bought in august upon the promise of the cheap upgrade to v.X

Typical microsoft.

bdusen
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

10/24, 05:50pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: NO LONG FILE NAMES

While Office X doesn't (currently) support long file names as of the late betas that are being distributed as the GM version on services like hotline, I wouldn't be surprised if that feature was added.

Long file names CAN be used by Carbon applications, but only Mach-O carbon apps like the Finder and other "100% OS X Pure" apps (There are next to none, though). Office X has too much legacy code to be Mach-O and has to settle for the less feature filled LaunchCMF type instead. These don't support Quartz (for general text Office still uses QuickDraw [like Internet Explorer], although for a lot of dialog box text and for drawing objects it does tap Quartz) and long file names. I'd say wait for Office 2003 if you're looking for a Mac OS X pure experience.

Incidentally, Office X is great. If it weren't for a fatal bug in Entourage that causes a crash when accessing an IMAP e-mail account and a few quirks in Word, I'd be thrilled with it. But then I actually plan on buying the final version when it comes out and won't have these bugs (Ahhh, gotta love the academic discount).

\0

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10/24, 06:12pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Bullsh!t

$300 for Micro$oft to carbonize Office 2001. They did little beyond carbonizing Office.

Does anyone really think that M$ spent many resources carbonizing OS X? h*** no. I think it's a more fair strategy to carbonize the next VERSION of an app, like Deneba did with Canvas. Paying several hundred bucks for both new features and carbonization is worth it, but paying that for carbonization alone is BS.

I'll either be buying the student version for $33 (if they offer it at that price like they did Office 2001), or I'll be downloading it for free. I have no problem with pirating a Microsoft rip-off app.

When oh when will the world be purged of this infestation called "Microsoft"? Forget ridding the world of "evildoers", I want to rid the world of M$. The evildoers can help by pirating M$ products.

Thank you.

gregn
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 1999

0

10/24, 08:10pm | report spam | close Reply |
Don't know = don't spea

If you don't know what you're talking about, then don't speak. First of all, you do not need to be a Mach-O binary to be able to use long file names. The object format of the app has nothing to do with this. The API for long file names has existed since the dawn of HFS+ and there is no reason that Microsoft shouldn't be using it.

Secondly, carbonizing an app like any of the office apps is not as simple as the above poster may think. I'd like to know how many apps he's carbonized. Mammoth apps like Word, etc use a lot of non-carbon hacks to get things to work, and making everything work as a seemless user experience in an entirely different operating system is quite a challenge.

Joined:

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10/24, 09:06pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
old hacks

It's true that carbonising something is often complicated by legacy hacks in the code. Sometimes these hacks were legitimate workarounds for inadequacies in the Mac OS API itself, but in the case of Office it's a bit facetious to use them as an excuse. The Office apps have never been particularly Mac-like to start with; they're generally weakened ports of the Windows versions (which themselves pretty much suck as far as application design, setting the low standard for the rest of Windows). The MBU has done some work to help with that, but it's basically a lost cause - they were basically designed to be substandard on the Mac, and nothing less than a total rewrite will ever really bring them up to speed. And if you're going to do that, why not just switch to some other up-and-coming app suite (with a less monopolistically designed file format).

In other words, old hacks are a problem Microsoft made for itself, probably knowingly in many cases. That they stand in the way of proper and rapid carbonisation is nothing new, just par for the course. The poor coding of the Office apps has always stood in the way of something.

rmobrien
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

10/24, 09:46pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: $149 Upgrade only if.

I posted the quote above at 1:36pm EDT. It says nothing about having to buy Office 2001 after September 1st to get the $149 price. I tried to post the link, but it didn't show up. Look on the MS web site linked to this article, and click on the upgrade link and read it yourself. If anything, purchases after September 1st are probably the ones eligible for the free upgrade.

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Microsoft announces Office v. X is complete

updated 09:05 am EDT, Wed October 24, 2001

free upgrade

nice

upgrade price

Cool

RE: Upgrade Price

You're Right Karl....

Upgrade price

Word + Entourage?

Re: Upgrade Price

Re: Upgrade Price

Using theGM?

Re: Upgrade Price

Re: Upgrade Price

PowerPoint

pp xp

Upgrade Prices

Re: Upgrade Pricing

How to Upgrade for $149

new stuff

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT

NO LONG FILE NAMES

PowerPoint XP does more

$149 upgrade only if...

Re: NO LONG FILE NAMES

Bullsh!t

Don't know = don't spea

old hacks

Re: $149 Upgrade only if.

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Microsoft announces Office v. X is complete

updated 09:05 am EDT, Wed October 24, 2001

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free upgrade

nice

upgrade price

Cool

RE: Upgrade Price

You're Right Karl....

Upgrade price

Word + Entourage?

Re: Upgrade Price

Re: Upgrade Price

Using theGM?

Re: Upgrade Price

Re: Upgrade Price

PowerPoint

pp xp

Upgrade Prices

Re: Upgrade Pricing

How to Upgrade for $149

new stuff

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT

NO LONG FILE NAMES

PowerPoint XP does more

$149 upgrade only if...

Re: NO LONG FILE NAMES

Bullsh!t

Don't know = don't spea

old hacks

Re: $149 Upgrade only if.

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