The Office 15 crystal ball just got murkier

Microsoft’s been teasing Office 15 for some months now, with occasional fleeting flashes during Windows 8 demos. Some lucky journalists who attended the Windows Surface announcement two weeks ago in Los Angeles had a chance to actually use the new Office on a Windows RT Surface machine – albeit for just a few minutes.

Shortly after the Surface announcement, I posted an analysis of What we don’t know about Microsoft Surface. Although much remains unanswered about the two Surface tablets, one small detail about Office 2013 slipped. As I described in that blog, Microsoft posted an official “Video Gallery” about the Surface tablets, which included an interesting revelation, in small print, down at the bottom of the page. It said that the Windows RT Surface “ships with Office Home & Student 2013 RT Preview.”

It’s hard to read much into that name, but at least superficially it would appear that there’s a different version of Office for Windows RT as opposed to Windows 8. It would also appear that there’s a Home & Student version of the new Office, and that Microsoft is planning on shipping Windows RT Surface tablets with a “Preview” of that version. Whatever that means.

I dropped by the same site a couple of hours ago, and ventured down to the bottom of the page again.

Now, the same page, in the same place, says, “Surface for Windows RT includes Office 15 Apps.”

That’s a considerable backtrack from what was originally announced. I wonder what it signifies?

Of course Microsoft will port Office to the iPad

Was there ever any doubt?

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Is Microsoft Office Enterprise in for a significant price decrease?

The tea leaves are pointing that way. It’s about $49 per seat per year right now, and Trefis figures it could hit $40 in the next seven years.

InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Microsoft pulling user-submitted Office templates

If you’ve ever submitted a template, graphic or video to Office.com, better make sure you have a copy. And if you’ve never looked through the (free) collection, now would be a good time to download whatever strikes your fancy. Microsoft is discontinuing the template collection, and removing all user-submitted templates.

Details in my InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.

The senseless panic of Office 15 programming

There are all sorts of echoes around the blogosphere about HTML5 and JavaScript support in Office 15.

It’s old news. Microsoft Channel 9 has been talking about it for months.

Here’s the whole story. InfoWorld Tech Watch.

Microsoft reels in new Office/BPOS cloud customers

Things may not be as they seem.

See my InfoWorld Tech Watch post.

OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice?

Tough choice, and MS Office compatibility continues to be problematic, especially with DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files.

See Neil McAllister’s InfoWorld Applications blog.

The road to Office 365: What Microsoft learned about renting Office

Ten years ago, Microsoft tried to rent Office XP – and failed miserably. See my InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.