Thu 6 Dec 2007
You probably heard that Microsoft is going to release Office 2007 SP1 next Tuesday. That is certainly good news to those of us who are planning to deploy Office 2007 soon. However, I find it remarkable that so little is known about the new features of this service pack. Microsoft doesn’t even tell us what kind of updates will be included.
Mary Jo Foley asked Microsoft officials about this SP. She wrote:
Officials declined to speak about what’s in the pack, but said it will include performance, security and reliability enhancements.
If they told her that Service Pack 1 for Office 2007 is a service pack, we would know more or less the same. I really wonder about the purpose of this secrecy. Sometimes it seems to me that beta software from Microsoft has a higher confidential status than Iran’s atom program.
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Michael, their secrecy is probably to prevent software like this being developed: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/05/some-one-call-a-lawyer-live-documents-clones-microsoft-office/
Obviously, it didn’t work haha. I wonder if a “Live-Documents” SP1 will be released soon after Office 2007 SP1
I’ll post more on the day but you have to also bear in mind that if you are running windows update regularly, you might well already be running most of sp1.
Brent, I doubt somehow that this service packs contains new features that could be copied by competitors. I guess the main reason for this secrecy is to keep people curious about a new product. Another reason might be that MS wants us to deploy Office 2007 as soon as possible.
Darren, that is probably true. But for those who are planning a rollout of Office 2007 this information is not enough. They have to know exactly what is in this SP. It would allow them to decide if it is worth to wait for its release.