Rob Pegoraro on MS Office 2010 and the Energy Crisis

Rob Pegoraro who writes in the Washington Post is one of the best consumer-technology writers on the scene.The headline on his article from today sums up his take on MS Office 2010: "Microsoft Office 2010 Not Yet Worth the Upgrade." And his blog post provides a really dispiriting followup: "Microsoft Office 2010: A cry for help?"

A lot of people are covering the coverage of new technologies -- at the moment the buzz around Apple's new iOS 4 release (formerly iPhone OS), new iPhone and iPad. But there's a story that's not being covered. It's the energy crisis.

No, not that one, the technology energy crisis. Several months ago, I attended a very small Drupal user group meeting. As it happened, the following day I attended a user group meeting for users of one of the mainstream productivity applications. The second gathering had many more people, and a minuscule amount of the energy from the Drupal group. (By the way, in case you're jumping to conclusions, the median age of both groups was pretty much the same; it was just the energy level that was different.) This is not about buzz or PR: it's about energy. The kind of energy that gets people excited so that they have that little bit extra to encourage them to push the limits of the tool

When iPad was released, one journalist wrote that it had no place in the business world. He reached this conclusion based on the fact that none of the Apple ads showed people sitting at a desk using an iPad. Funny, I reached the opposite conclusion. I saw people sitting with their feet up or in groups on sofas doing things -- hard to tell if it was work or play. But I started to question whether desks and offices have a place in the business world today.

That's a big part of the ennui that seems to have settled over MS Office. As the Post Office has learned to its chagrin, there may be easier ways to communicate in writing than using letters and memos. And as for spreadsheets, well, I've come to appreciate the very efficient tag/word clouds.

The whole way of arranging information in a digital age where the information can be in many places at once is a vibrant scene today. There's Google's Wonder Wheels and now Pearltrees. Those paper documents and concepts built on them are fading fast, but it's a slow fade.

Many of us have seen suggestions or proposals for innovative projects be shot down by proponents of the ancien regime. (Note to the A.R.: Front Page is no longer a supported product, and that clip art was corny the first time around.) I'm starting to wonder if the people who will use the new technologies have already adopted them and we just have to wait for the others to retire. It's those two meetings that gave me this thought: the energy has gone out of the old ways of working.

I'm starting to think that we no longer have to make accommodations for people who don't use the new tools such as the social web, content management systems, and the cloud. Rather, it's time that they make accommodations for us if they don't want to use those technologies and tools themselves. The future is bright enough, and the tools are mature enough although there's much work left to do. But it's time to take the tools out of the closet and use them as our primary tools. People will catch up--or they won't.

This quote from The Globe and Mail's site caught my eye: 

Next year over half of Apple's revenue will be from products that didn't exist four years ago.

It's from an article by Steve Proceviat; the speaker is Gordon Reid, president and chief executive officer Goodreid Investment Counsel, Corp.

It's time to stop looking back.