Launch Events Showcase Office XP
Microsoft launched Thursday their much anticipated Office XP suite in 15 countries throughout the world. Conventions to celebrate the event were held in cities across the United States, including New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Washington DC also showcased the XP debut, with BetaNews in attendance.
Lacking much press coverage, the day was kicked off by Senior Executive at Microsoft, Jeff Raikes, with an introduction to Office XP and outline of key features. Individual demonstrations followed, offering further insight into functionality added by this latest release.
Microsoft held 'skill stations' around the arena give users and developers a chance to experience Office XP hands-on. Demo machines offered a look at one of the most intriguing features of the suite, SharePoint Team Services. SharePoint allows users to collaborate with co-workers from any PC running Internet Explorer 5.01 and higher. Employees may add surveys, announcements, links, documents, spreadsheets, and ideas to a centralized location for each member to view. SharePoint integrates directly with Outlook and other applications to enable document publication and task management via the Web.
Another highly touted asset of Office XP demoed Thursday was the 'smart tags' feature. Smart tags allow for pre-defined or custom actions to be performed on a piece of data. For example, a user can type a single word into a spreadsheet and utilize a smart tag function to query a database and populate the document with associated information.
The day closed with afternoon sessions detailing specific uses of Office XP in a business environment. Attendants also walked away with a bag of goodies containing a t-shirt, Visio 2002, MapPoint 2002, and other trial software.
System requirements for Office XP are very light, demanding only 24MB of RAM for Windows 98, 32MB for Windows Me or NT, and 64MB for Windows 2000 Professional. Office XP Standard requires a minimum 210MB of free hard disk space, while Professional requires 245MB. All versions require a monitor capable of displaying 800x600 at 256 colors or higher.
Office XP Standard will retail for $249 USD, with Professional Edition following at $329 USD. Microsoft has priced a Developer Edition at $549 USD, which features additional developer tools. Frontpage and Publisher 2002 will only be available in a Special Edition Professional release with IntelliMouse Explorer, at a cost of $479 USD. For more information on purchasing Office XP, visit microsoft.com.