By Mary Sheridan, Member at Large, Tampa PC Users Group
mcpease@mindspring.com

I spent all day yesterday, October 23, at the Convention Center in downtown Tampa. The reason I was there was the Microsoft Office 2003 product launch. I had breakfast, lunch, learned a lot and had a great time. AND, Microsoft will be sending me a full blown copy of Office 2003 Enterprise Edition and One Note 2003 for attending. Does it get any better?

At the event we received a box of Microsoft 2003 evaluation software. Evaluation copies are 120 day trial versions of the various offerings unless otherwise noted. The kit includes: Office Professional Edition 2003 ($499.00*), Office InfoPath 2003 ($199.00*), Office Front Page 2003 ($199.00), Office OneNote 2003 ($199.00), Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager ($109.00), Office Visio 2003 ($199.00), Office Project Standard 2003 (60 day evaluation) ($599.00), Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 ($5,619.00), Office Live Communications Server 2003 ($1,059.00), Windows SharePoint Services 2003 (expires with Windows Server 2003) (no pricing available), Windows Server 2003 (180 day evaluation) ($1,199.00) and Exchange Server 2003 ($1,299.00). Whew, that’s a lot of money!

Microsoft Office 2003 Professional Edition has the core programs: Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint. Plus, the professional edition includes Microsoft Office Access 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 with Business Contact Manager.

The emphasis of the latest version of Office products is the team environments in the workplace and the ability to collaborate with others. Microsoft lists the ten top reasons to upgrade as 1. Helps employees make smart and timely decisions because of the programs’ XML capabilities, 2. Helps companies protect their information with Information Rights Management (IRM) and you can even set expiration dates for files, 3. Helps employees better manage the information with improved design in Outlook, 4. XML standardizes the collection and creation of information, 5. Helps company groups take advantage of line-of-business applications, 6. Improves performance and user connectivity to email (cached mode saves lots of time when checking email), 7. Shared workspaces help improve teaming and partnering, 8. Support of XML allows custom solutions to be created, 9. Increases security and privacy, and 10. Simplifies upgrades administration and support. The emphasis is giving some power to the end users and taking some of the workload away from the IT departments.

All editions of Office are written for the business environment. There are, however, many nice features added to the new version that any of us could use. I’m out of writing time so I’ll just have to steer you to http://www.microsoft.com/office for any additional information.

*Prices are listed on the Microsoft website. Most of these products can be bought for much less at discount dealers. Products do not ship until November 2003. u