Don’t hold your breath for a Microsoft Office in Linux flavour. They have not even come up with a bug free Vista yet….

As open source solutions gain additional ground and increasingly find their way in various aspects of life, Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) has predicted that Microsoft and Linux will deepen their relation. In this context, he referred to the inevitability of a Microsoft Office version designed for Linux.

Microsoft Office in Linux flavour source

Check out the preview of the 2007 Microsoft Office system here. The 2007 Microsoft Office system is scheduled to launch for enterprise customers in October, with availability for retail customers in January 2007.

The new Office System has also been designed to provide enhanced integration with other Microsoft solutions, including the forthcoming Windows Vista, Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, to enable a more people-centric approach to communication and collaboration, business intelligence, and content management. These enhancements increase the impact that people have on business success by simplifying how people work together, helping people manage content and keep it more secure, improving business processes, and helping to enable people to find and gain insight from information.

2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 source

Here’s my prediction. Office 2007 will not be changed to Office 2008 as they have not decided if they should hire Puff Daddy or Jessica Alba to be the next ambassador for it. Sheesh. Seriously they should sack the whole PR team in good old MS and get me instead. I’m cheaper than the whole lot. How else can I buy my first Porshe ?

Microsoft will delay the release of its Office 2007 business productivity software to improve product performance in the latest setback for the world’s largest software maker.

Microsoft said it will now aim for a launch of Office 2007 to business customers by the end of 2006 rather than an earlier target of October. Microsoft also said it would delay the general availability of the Office upgrade to early 2007 from its previous January target.

The delay of the 2007 Microsoft Office package, which includes the Word processor, Excel spreadsheet and PowerPoint presentation software, marks the latest slip-up at Microsoft, which has been plagued by a series of postponements.

Another delay for Office 2007 source

There’s going to be some new refreshments to the Microsoft Office user interface and here’s a good video to watch if you are keen to know what’s going to be done.

In previous releases of Microsoft Office applications, people used a system of menus, toolbars, task panes, and dialog boxes to get their work done. This system worked well when the applications had a limited number of commands. Now that the programs do so much more, the menus and toolbars system does not work as well. Too many program features are too hard for many users to find. For this reason, the overriding design goal for the new user interface is to make it easier for people to find and use the full range of features these applications provide. In addition, we wanted to preserve an uncluttered workspace that reduces distraction for users so they can spend more time and energy focused on their work. With these goals in mind, we developed a results-oriented approach that makes it much easier to produce great results using the 2007 Microsoft Office applications.