A couple of 2007 Q's

[Andrew Oliner]

1. Is ON 2007 usable for production, not just testing? I am asking this both
from the standpoint of quality and from the standpoint of Microsoft policy.
It sounds like a lot of people are using it, not just "evaluating" it. As I
understand it, other than the Expiration, there are no limits (ie, limited
number of pages, limited number of sections) in ON 2007 that would not exist
in the released version.

2. Is ON 2007 stable enough to be relatively trustworthy? I recognize that
it is still beta, but it sounds pretty solid. It sounds like, although this
is not official policy, the unofficial word is "jump right in!"

3. As I understand it, ON 2007 notebooks are not backward-compatible with
2003, correct? If 2007 blew up, I could return to my backed-up 2003
notebooks, but any new info entered into 2007 would be lost. Correct?

4. Is it possible to install ON 2007 without installing the rest of Office
2007? I am quite happy with Word 2003, etc. Will ON 2007 conflict with
Office 2003? Will ON 2007's neat integration features work with Outlook
2003, or do they require Outlook 2007? Are there any other office 2007 apps
which ON would need or want?

Thanks.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Andrew,

Tough question. Official MS line is that you should never use beta
software for production work.

1. Is ON 2007 usable for production, not just testing? I am asking this both
from the standpoint of quality and from the standpoint of Microsoft policy.
It sounds like a lot of people are using it, not just "evaluating" it. As I
understand it, other than the Expiration, there are no limits (ie, limited
number of pages, limited number of sections) in ON 2007 that would not exist
in the released version.

There are no limits. It is usable for production, if you are willing to
work with beta software. See the next paragraph.

2. Is ON 2007 stable enough to be relatively trustworthy? I recognize that
it is still beta, but it sounds pretty solid. It sounds like, although this
is not official policy, the unofficial word is "jump right in!"

Kind of But be prepared to land very hard. It seems to be pretty
solid and I don't know of anyone who has lost any serious amount of data
in the entire beta. However, IT IS BETA and you might be the first one.
I back up all my notebooks daily automatically, keep my two machines as
best in sync as possible and are always prepared for a disaster.
I have been using 2007 exclusively since November and it works pretty
well for me. However, be prepared to face major issues. For example, I
can't leave ON open on my tablet while I am at home, because syncing my
notebooks via Windows Offline Files doesn't work with my setup (I am
probably the only beta tester who has this issue, at least as far as I
know). What happens is that my CPU usage goes to 100% and Windows
Explorer blocks access to all files that are handled by Windows Offline
Files, in my case my entire My Documents. In addition, it slows down my
desktop substantially. That is not just a minor annoyance, but rather a
serious issue. It is beta software though and these are the kinds of
things that one has to live with. I am living with it and I am helping
MS trying to fix the bug.
As I said, I haven't heard of a serious data loss with OneNote so far,
but I myself had one with another 2007 product in the previous beta
version (the reason why I had one has been fixed in B2). I am personally
willing to use beta software for production work (in fact that is the
only way I can really test a product and I have been using Office 2007
since November, except in circumstances where that wasn't possible at
all). It is a risk to do this and if it weren't for an NDA, I could
share quite a few stories of me sweating and wondering why I was doing
this to myself.
One more comment: This is REAL beta software. This is not some well
working product that is just being labeled as Beta for marketing
purposes like some of the Google or smaller MS products might be. Office
2007 Beta 2 definitely deserves the label Beta.

If you choose to take the risk: Make sure you have constant backups!
Make sure you are willing to put up with small to major annoyances! Make
sure you can deal with OneNote just crashing on you. Make sure you are
willing to work with REAL beta software.

3. As I understand it, ON 2007 notebooks are not backward-compatible with
2003, correct? If 2007 blew up, I could return to my backed-up 2003
notebooks, but any new info entered into 2007 would be lost. Correct? Yes.

4. Is it possible to install ON 2007 without installing the rest of Office
2007? I am quite happy with Word 2003, etc. Will ON 2007 conflict with
Office 2003? Will ON 2007's neat integration features work with Outlook
2003, or do they require Outlook 2007? Are there any other office 2007 apps
which ON would need or want?

Yes. ON 2007 is a separate download anyhow for the beta. You should be
able to run ON 2007 stand-alone and it should be able to tie in with
Outlook 2003. To what degree that works, I don't know. Try it and see
for yourself.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Andrew Oliner]

Patrick,

Thanks for your reply. You've given me a lot of stuff to think about.

Right now, I am inclined to stay away. I think you've right: my perception
of "beta" has been influenced by Google's never-ending "betas".

Andy

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Inline:

1. Is ON 2007 usable for production, not just testing? I am asking
this both from the standpoint of quality and from the standpoint of
Microsoft policy. It sounds like a lot of people are using it, not
just "evaluating" it. As I understand it, other than the Expiration,
there are no limits (ie, limited number of pages, limited number of
sections) in ON 2007 that would not exist in the released version.

There are no limitations in the Beta2 version of the product. There
would be no point in releasing a beta version for public testing if it
differed drastically from the final product in capability. PEr the
release notes and other official publications from MS, maybe not all of
the intended features have been completed yet.

2. Is ON 2007 stable enough to be relatively trustworthy? I recognize
that it is still beta, but it sounds pretty solid. It sounds like,
although this is not official policy, the unofficial word is "jump
right in!"

Each person's tolerance for beta products will differ, but most of the
non-MS regulars here have been using the product in a production setting
since before the B1 days. Try it out on non-production data first and
come to your own conclusion. At this late stage, you probably wouldn't
lose data, just time, etc. from dealing ith expected crashes. I'm using
B2 in full production mode at work and have no data stored in my 2003
installation. But again, YMMV.

3. As I understand it, ON 2007 notebooks are not backward-compatible
with 2003, correct? If 2007 blew up, I could return to my backed-up
2003 notebooks, but any new info entered into 2007 would be lost.
Correct?

All correct. You can do a one-time conversion from 2003 *.ONE files into
the 2007 format (if you upgrade over 2003, this will be done
automatically). You would have to copy/paste to get data back into a
2003 Page. At this point, I'm fairly confident that you won't lose any
large amounts of data after converting. At most, you might lose some
small amount of changes in a particular session if your local cache goes
belly up, but that's about it.

4. Is it possible to install ON 2007 without installing the rest of
Office 2007? I am quite happy with Word 2003, etc. Will ON 2007
conflict with Office 2003? Will ON 2007's neat integration features
work with Outlook 2003, or do they require Outlook 2007? Are there any
other office 2007 apps which ON would need or want?

Thanks.

For the Beta2 installs, OneNote is a separate download, which should
enable you to just install ON and keep whatever other non-ON programs you
have installed. Most of the Outlook integration features will work with
Outlook 2003.

Also keep in mind that with the exception of Outlook, the other Office
programs can be installed on the same computer. On both my work and home
machines, I'm running both 2003 and 2007 for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and
OneNote. There have been no conflicts or crashes cased by having both
versions on the hard drive. Just be sure to install to different
directories under "C:\Program Files".

 

[Daniel Escapa [MS]]

Of course if you are like me you ONLY live in Betas.

When I am testing Vista, Office, Office Communicator, IE & Firefox. You
realize that you actually can live with software that crashes : )

But Patrick is right, you shouldn't use OneNote on any mission critical
stuff. If you have a spare machine I would still check it out!

Patrick,

Thanks for your reply. You've given me a lot of stuff to think about.

Right now, I am inclined to stay away. I think you've right: my perception
of "beta" has been influenced by Google's never-ending "betas".

Andy

 

[Patrick Schmid]

When I am testing Vista, Office, Office Communicator, IE & Firefox.
You

realize that you actually can live with software that crashes : )

Haha...Compared to you I am harmless...Only Office and IE beta, but all
of it for mission critical work (I usually don't follow my own
recommendation).

Patrick Schmid
--------------
http://pschmid.net

But Patrick is right, you shouldn't use OneNote on any mission critical
stuff. If you have a spare machine I would still check it out!

 

[Grant Robertson]

But Patrick is right, you shouldn't use OneNote on any mission critical
stuff. If you have a spare machine I would still check it out!

You know, Microsoft should provide a free Virtual Machine Player like
VMware does. Then you could distribute the full Office 2007 beta in a
virtual machine file and people could test it there without having to
worry about installing it correctly or hosing up their existing software.
You would get a lot more people willing to try it out and you could show
off your virtualization software at the same time.

 

[Grant Robertson]

I agree with what everyone else said but I have to add this one tip:

You can copy your current OneNote 2003 folder to a differently named
directory, install OneNote 2007 beta but don't let it upgrade (just
install it along side of ON 2003), then open your differently named
OneNote folder in 2007. This way it isn't messing with your working 2003
files. You can also then compare the behavior of each.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Aloha Grant,

You know, Microsoft should provide a free Virtual Machine Player like
VMware does. Then you could distribute the full Office 2007 beta in a
virtual machine file and people could test it there without having to
worry about installing it correctly or hosing up their existing
software. You would get a lot more people willing to try it out and
you could show off your virtualization software at the same time.

Not a bad idea, but really doesn't solve the problem of people using Beta
software for mission-critical data and then complaining when it crashes.

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr - MVP
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[Patrick Schmid]

If you have the time, you can get MS's Virtual Server for free and
install ON into it. I have to admit that I gave up after trying for a
few hours though...

Patrick Schmid