Office 2000
Overall, a good office product but this upgrade does not provide a meaningful enough upgrade of capabilities over Office 97 to justify an immediate upgrade purchase. Several independent reviewers agree.
A “Must Avoid” for Mi$er and Impromptu users due to major conflicts at this point
Acquiring Office 2000 with new PC purchases- if “bundled” by vendor with the new system being purchased, we feel this is acceptable as long as you are not a Mi$er or Impromptu user.
Those few who will soon purchase Office 2000 will definitely need to patch the product to resolve security issues and other bugs.
Contact your ATS or ACS representative, or The Computer Store for answers to your questions or advice about this product.
Key sources:
ATS/ACS joint meetings
Hands-on testing and review of product by ACS and ATS
Microsoft web sites
ACS/ATS tests reveal certain conflicts with widely installed and used Department systems or software. These are:
Mi$er (200 users)
Impromptu V 4 & V 5 (80-90 users)
Entire Connection V 4 (40 users)
The Microsoft web site indicates on-going issues with:
Outlook 2000 troubleshooting
Outlook 2000 and AOL
Configuration of Exchange in Outlook 2000
Internet e-mail and Outlook 2000
Minimum hardware requirements per Microsoft will be a impairment to adoption of Office 2000 for many users (especially ATS users). Minimum requirements being Pentium 75 MHz with 64 M RAM and 391 M free space with CD ROM and VGA monitor/card
Office 98 for the Macintosh is compatible with the PC Office 2000 environment.
Backward compatibility with Office 98 and 95 is questionable - sharing Macros, templates, and documents among Word/Excel/ PP and Access all have a significant number of open issues. For compatibility between earlier versions of MS Office, you may need to install a converter in your older version of Office to open documents from Office 2000.
ACS’s experience- other than Mi$er and Impromptu, we have not noticed significant pure operational issues
Web maintenance features, namely Frontpage and Photodraw, found in the most expensive version of Office 2000(Premium version) are useful new product capabilities.
Users may experience learning curve with installing Office 2000 and some frustration working with tool bars. Otherwise a short learning curve is involved.
Uninstalling Office 2000 in an attempt to resolve conflicts may not resolve the conflicts. It is very important for users to look at this product carefully before they jump in and install it.
4 Flavors (versions) marketed by Microsoft:
Standard ver. (W/Ex/O/PP)
Small Business ver. ( + Pub/SB Tools)
Professional ver. ( + Access)
Premium ver. ( + Frontpage/Photodraw)
Updated 2/11/2000