Hey. I think that Microsoft Office is one heck of a tool to do anything with your computer. I have had MS Office on my computer since I purchased it awhile back. I have went from Office Small Business 2000 to Office XP with FrontPage and now I have Office Professional 2003 with InfoPath. The programs I have that are from Office are Access, FrontPage, Outlook, InfoPath, Word, Publisher, Excel and PowerPoint. I also have Microsoft Works Suite 2003 and a bunch of other programs from Office, including Encarta and Streets & Tips 2004. But, is Microsoft planning to release an Office 2005/2006 or a new version anytime soon?

Microsoft will release a new version in thenext 2 years or so. It takes that long to write and test etc. Another reason for taking so long is to make a return on the investment it took to make the program in the first place.
I have and use Office 97. It's still a very capable version. It's easier to add graphics in 97 than in Office XP. I have just upgaded to Office 2003, still not sure about it.

Microsoft is also making a new file system, currently NTFS is the standard for XP Office etc. This new file system is meant to be even better, more stable etc. So untill they work out the bugs with the new file system, Office 2003 will be the only version you will buy.

I also like Corel Perfect Office, it's better in some ways to MS Office.

Cheers,
Greg

Filesystem has this much to do with office software:



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Filesystem is transparent to software. Only the OS controls I/O to the filesystem and, ultimately, to the disc.

So you use XP on a fat 16 do you?

Your pc must be really good.
MS are changing the file system. There is a goos chance and I hope they do that it is not backward compatiable.
This means that current software will not work on it. Another way to stop pirates.

FAT16 allows you to create a partition of about 2GB max & you could install OfficeXP on it & run it without any problems. The filesystem has to do with the Operating System, not the programs running on top of that Operating System.