More good news for Microsoft and, of course, for our beamish boyish billionaire Bill Gates, with the June 10 shipping of Microsoft Office 2000 ($279 and up, and up, and away up to $700 for brand new non-upgrade buyers).
After spending a couple months reviewing a rock-solid upgrade of Bill’s new office-productivity suite, about all I can say is, gosh howdy, this one’s a real keeper.
Before I gush praise for the stunning additions that 2000 brings to the home office/corporate office desktop, I need to address something sure to displease those who take the view that Gates heads an unconscionably voracious monopoly in operating systems and Internet browser software.
Microsoft’s dominance over companies selling competitive office suites (word processor/spreadsheet/database, etc.) is even worse than its 60 to 70 percent lock on the Internet browser market.
Microsoft Office now controls a whopping 90 percent of all sales of suites running on Microsoft Windows-based machines. Now industry observers are predicting a rush to upgrade from earlier Office versions to 2000 that probably will assure even more record earnings for the world’s richest man.
It is estimated that 15 million corporate licenses for Office 2000 were sold during the period of prerelease testing when I conducted my review. All I can say is that if I were my employer’s computer chief, I would have made it 15 million and one.
Writing these columns in Word 2000 over the past two months has been a joy as that one small part of the Office 2000 suite has actually learned my personal quirks for doing things and has started second-guessing my moves.
For example, the command bar at the top of the screen has gradually changed as I have worked to place up front the commands that I personally and peculiarly use as a column writer (spell check, grammar check, word count).
It also has learned the boiler plate that I use, such as my own byline and common (for me) words like Chicago, Microsoft, Binary Beat and gosh howdy. When I start to type one of these familiar words, the software quickly displays the full word in a little yellow box so that I can hit enter and get it without typing it.
Gosh howdy!
Microsofties call this second-guessing feature IntelliSense and it pervades the new software in many forms, including one I consider pretty bizarre.
I’m referring to a hyperactive little animated icon, a talking paper clip with eyebrows and a mustache that pops up to guide a user through the steps needed to get something done.
I come from a generation that considered seeing anthropomorphic paper clips with attitude a symptom of drug abuse. I suspect that Hunter Thompson would just love this little guy.
You type in something like “How do I put footers on every page but the last page” and the paper clip works you step by step to get the thing done.
Strange as this may sound in cold type, this talking paper clip really works, and with it you can do things you’ve never done before much faster than ever before.
My Excel expertise stops just past making up overly optimistic projections of how my 401(k) account is going to eventually make me Bill’s next-door neighbor, but even I can see vast improvements in how the spreadsheet fills in formulas to allow far easier budget planning.
Here, too, the paper clip from hell is a boon companion, letting you type in queries like “How do I figure interest on an automobile loan?” and then showing how to set up the needed formula.
Microsoft executives insist–a bit wrongheadedly, I believe–that the hottest new feature in Office 2000 is that it does all of this work using the Internet’s programming language HTML (HyperText Markup Language), which means that everything you produce can be quickly uploaded to a Web server and shared with the world as a Web page.
This complete Internet integration is easy to see and I certainly enjoyed using the Office 2000 Front Page module to Web post trial documents during my test.
Far more interesting, however, are things like how the Web-friendly powers meld nicely with the Microsoft Outlook module in Office 2000 to let you manage e-mail accounts as well as keep track of your daily schedules.
Outlook 2000 let me incorporate several e-mail accounts into one program, thus letting me read and answer stuff far quicker than when each account required running a different program. It works particularly slick, of course, when I connect to the Internet by way of my $20-per-month account on the Microsoft Network.
I simply run Microsoft Windows 98, click on the Microsoft Internet Explorer, then click the icon for Microsoft Office 2000. When it comes up I ask the Microsoft paper clip where I want to go today.
Gosh howdy!
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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/go/askjim or e-mail jcoates@ameritech.net. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60611
