Commercial Usage Office 2007 vs. Office 2002/2003

[JOIN INC]

I work as an instructor for a non-profit that trains people in several work
readiness areas and one of these areas is office skills. For the past 4
years we have been training students in Microsoft Office XP as our primary
readiness tool for entry into the workplace at both entry-level jobs and for
those who are seeking to return to work after lay-offs, down-sizing, or just
to improve their employability.

I want to propose to my board that we upgrade in December 2008 to the newest
Microsoft Office 2007 software. I have found a great text that we can use,
that covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and Outlook (an additional class
over what we currently offer). There is also an additional text by the same
authors and following the same format that would allow us to add Publisher
2007 to our offerings. All good things in my opinion. BUT, we can only
order software once a year through www.techsoup.org and I need to advocate
for this cause. What I need is some figures on sales or usages of office
2007 vs. the office 2002 or 2003. I have looked everywhere and even asked
on several BB’s, but I can’t seem to find anything. Has anyone seen anything
like this out there that I could use to bolster my arguments for upgrading,
some links taht I could include with my proposal would be ideal. Any help
would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Bob I]

Simple really, Office 2002 and earlier are out of support, and Office
2003 is no longer sold. Also Office 2007 can Save As 2003-97 as well as
PDF and XPS, so file handling is not an issue.

 

[Gordon]

Also Office 2007 can Save As 2003-97 as well as PDF and XPS,

It'll only save as PDF and XPS with the XPS add-in, not natively AFAIK....

 

[Bob I]

Opps, forgot I installed it. But it's there for the install.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101675271033.aspx

 

[JOIN INC]

What I am really looking for are some numbers to prove that enough workplaces
are using Office 2007 at this point to make the investment in purchasing
software and texts, I believe that there are, but I will need something to
back up these beliefs or it will get rejected.

 

[Bob I]

Ever try google? And considering it's been a year since the article
below, the question should be moot.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/12/Microsoft-Office-2007-a-retail-hit-NPD-says_1.html

 

[JOIN INC]

Saw a similar article on Cnet that didn't include the Mac info, thanks for
this one

 

[Jacinthe]

I don't have any studies to offer you - and I think the offered article would
probably be most helpful - but I have plenty of real world experience with
both suites. There is a positive and a negative side to upgrading your
teaching to Office 2007.

Positive - Clearly, Office 2007 is where we are headed. Teaching your
students Office 2007 would allow them to be "ahead of the curve".

Negative - For those companies, like mine, that are afraid to upgrade to
2007 because of the steep learning curve, the backwards learning curve would
also be detrimental. I have MS certifications in Office XP, but having used
2007 at home for two years (ever since the first Beta), it was difficult to
go backwards again when I started this job.

I make this suggestion that would perhaps make it easier for your students -
convince the board to buy the Office 2007 and install the upgrade on half
your computers, then rotate the students around during the activities to make
sure they know how to do each task in both versions. They simplified a lot
of things in 2007 to be intuitive and I think if they didn't still have SOME
background in XP, there would be a lot of learning time to find things that
were very easy to find in 2007.

Just my $0.02 ...