More office stuff

I wrote about the new version of Office last week, and Matt at least seemed interested, so I've got a few more articles to share. Anil Dash makes the point that, on conservative estimations, the Office platform makes $250 million a week for Microsoft, so they're naturally going to reluctant to make wholesale, dramatic changes that scare off users. But that's exactly what they've done, to make 'the bravest upgrade ever.' So rock on Microsoft for that. This post has the very exciting news that the new version of Word has a constantly updating word count in the status bar, perfect for Arts students desperate to make the word limit. And there's an interesting discussion here about it all, and specifically some nice stuff about the 'soothing' new look of it all.

I think I'll just go ahead and download the beta version when I'm home next week, and have time to play around with it properly. I don't actually have a functioning version of Office on my new laptop, so it'll also be a good way to avoid buying a copy of 2003 before the new edition comes out!