I just spent the last ten minutes playing around with the Technical Refreshed release of Beta 1 of Office 2007… most specifically, I was poking around PowerPoint, of all things. I know… it’s not the typical application for a Test/Dev type to be playing with, but I spent a lot of time with PPT when I was teaching and I wanted to see what was different.
My reaction? Wow. Just… Wow.
Wow or not. MS is still going to have a hard time convincing people to upgrade. I read that they’re planing on a $500,000,000 advertising Blitz to help sell Office 2007. On a simmilar note, I am going to spend $.60 on a Pepsi.
The $500 mil is company wide, so it includes Vista, Exchange, Office, etc. In addition to that, I’ve watched people use the betas… it’s kinda funny: they are using features that have been in the product since XP and 2003 but they didn’t know it was there. With the new UI, it just makes it easier to use and that makes people more productive. It’s all good.