One big thing to beware of when you see an Office 2010 demo.
The Office 2010 hype is about to start in earnest and from the Microsoft demos we’ve seen so far there’s one big gotcha.
Microsoft loves showing off new features, they do not make clear is the full pre-requisites for that feature.
Very often the coolest and most hyped features require expensive and recent server systems. The same features aren’t available to many small business and individual users.
At best the pre-requisites are glossed over, more often they are omitted entirely.
This gotcha especially applies to Outlook 2010 which is heavily dependent on Exchange Server 2010. If you or your company doesn’t have the most recent Exchange Server, you’ll be disappointed.
For example, you’ll see a lot of voicemail support and even voice recognition of voice messages. It looks great, voicemails are delivered to Outlook where you can play the message or read a text rendering of the message.
But don’t expect to see that if you buy Office 2010 unless you or your company has spent a lot of time and money installing Exchange Server 2010 and integrated voicemail support. And don’t expect the text version of the audio file to be as accurate as the ones you see in demos.
You might be inclined to say Microsoft is being enthusiastic about the next Office – but unfortunately that enthusiasm creeps over into outright misrepresentation of what Office 2010 can do.
There’s little chance of Microsoft changing their practice of glossing over the true requirements for Office features, after all they’ve got away with it for years and it helps sales.
It remains for customers to be on guard – make sure you are clear on the requirements and don’t get carried away with the hype only to be disappointed once you’ve paid your money.
