So Office 2003 is being binned for OEM’s from the end of this month less than 6 months from when it received it’s full MS launch. Which does rather beg the question…Why ? I use it at home and in the office on one of my machines and it’s perfect for my needs. So why is being taken from us ?
Call me a cynic but I view this as a deliberate and none-too-subtle means to keep us on the upgrade path. I recently attended an excellent MS open day showcasing amongst other things VS Orcas (Now entitled VS 2008 – bet that had the marketeers scratching their heads for hours). Within this presentation there was a lot of web stuff, winforms and .Net framework v3.5 goodness (LINQ to XML/XSD looks like with a bit more work it’ll be a killer feature)However something that did slip past a little unnoticed from most in the room was that much of this loveliness was only going to be available on Vista…no back-porting the .Net API down to XP. Very interesting as they (the MS drones) were making a big deal about no need to recompile and regression test code as the CLR was all the same as current .Net framework (v2.0)

What has this all to do with Office 2003 going out of production ? Well they were very clear that they believe the biggest expansion in future MS software usage is going to be in Office application extensions. In other words out-of-the-box your Office 2007 install will do 75%(ish) of your required business function and to complete the picture you will extend the Office function by programming against the .Net framework to develop hand-rolled office extensions within a managed codebase…not shonky old VBA ! So in other words if their projections come true and folks out there really are extending the Office object model for their own specialist requirements then there’s only going to be one place and platform on which to do it. Office 2007 on Vista !

So rather than the “Carrot and Stick” approach it’s the “Stick and Stick” approach !

Sneaky huh ?