The Microsoft Office 2003 carries, aside from familiar applications like Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, new programs such as OneNote, InfoPath and LiveMeeting.
The additions signal the beginning of the Microsoft Office System which is about integrating servers, programs, services and solutions so information workers, teams and organizations can become more efficient.
"Our interest is to give information workers productivity tools to give them great moments at work," Gates told a theater-full of international mediamen, partners and clients.
"There’s more to do and we’re continuously increasing our research and development (investments) to find opportunities to make people more effective (at work). The Microsoft Office System is the next frontier, with people working together as the general theme," he said.
From being a suite of personal productivity tools used today by some 400 million people worldwide, Microsoft Office has evolved into a comprehensive and integrated system designed to address information work problems.
Jeff Raikes, Microsoft’s group vice president for productivity and business services, said the Microsoft Office System targets issues related to integration, utilization and collaboration of information within a company that impact on the productivity of information workers and their organizations.
"This is the most that Microsoft has done in terms of focusing on the information worker. It’s a shift from individual information worker productivity to the overall organizational productivity. This is a changing point as we articulate the brand from ‘Office’ to ‘Office System,’" added Raikes.
Scheduled for Philippine launch next month, Microsoft Office 2003 has at least six core editions, which include the Professional and Professional Enterprise editions, the Small Business edition, the Student and Teacher Edition, and the Standard and Basic editions.
The Enterprise Edition is the most complete suite which not only includes the professional versions of Outlook 2003’s core applications but also the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 and Business Contact Manager, among other things.
Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 is a program that streamlines the process of gathering information by enabling teams and organizations to easily create and work with content-rich, dynamic forms.
Gates said this is made possible by supporting the Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema and integrating XML Web services so users can see information using different applications and devices.
Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 is a note-taking tool, which works best with tablet PCs but can be used with standard PCs, too.
Raikes predicted that OneNote will be used by "all of us daily in the near future as we use e-mail and PowerPoint."
OneNote combines the freedom and flexibility of paper notes with the power of digital organizational tools.
Microsoft Office 2003 was designed with both people and information in mind by providing new tools to manage e-mail, for example.
The Reading Pane, Navigation Pane and new e-mail views in Outlook 2003 work together to give customers a more comprehensive, organized view of their inboxes and allow them to use their screen real estate better.
There are also enhanced rules and desktop alerts, a more automated Outlook search folder management, and new Outlook Quick Flags.
Above all, Microsoft executives claim they have also improved the junk e-mail filtering not only to prevent unwanted e-mail from clogging up users’ systems but also to block external HTML content designed to protect users’ privacy.
"Outlook is the most changed module in Microsoft Office 2003. Based on early (press) reviews, it’s been ‘sensational and a far-reaching overhaul’ and ‘a gift from the gods to the mere mortals,’" said Gates, quoting reviews from the New York Times and the San Jose Mercury News, respectively.
Gates said the new Microsoft Office System is a result of an evolution since the first Office Word came out in the 1980s.
"I still remember how the first Office entrants were and since then we’ve been listening hard (to our users)," he said.