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Darn, it's not instant download :(

Paul,

This thing has been available for a while now.

Ok I applied. Now we wait and hope.

Thanks...going after it now.

Open Office is good enough for what my family and I do (and I have Closed, oops, *MS* Office on my work laptop) so this would be for comparison only.

I got this from Demonoid... It's actually REALLY nice. Love the Outlook 2010.

I been using it for a two days, got it from a torrent but I think it's an older version becuase it is slow and crashes. Small changes in the apps that allready had the ribbon but outlook and others have been redone. For now I will stop using it and wait for public beta.

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I'll wait for it to just come out in release form in my Action Pack before it graces my production network, thank you very much.

I have a non-production machine to test software, but I don't test it day-to-day, so testing is very checklist-y and controlled - that way, final deployment is too.  I just think it's easier, and much MUCH faster doing it that way than with the "guinea pig" option.

You can test something in a pre-release state, but if you don't plan for new updates and come out with a checklist for interoperability, compatibility, reliability, and necessary functionality, and instead just "wing-it" in day-to-day stuff, you'll be completely lost when business grinds to a halt because something in software doesn't work the way you think it should.

I have a number of document templates just for testing software, and nearly half of each document contains sections on dealing with the vendor to come up with a solution and/or workaround.  The Microsoft ACT comes in especially handy with that as well.

IT people should plan for failures in migration and upgrades probably moreso than for successes.  Problem mitigation is part of the job role.

I'll give a try.

FYI,  Micro Center has the Win 7 upgrades for $39 and 89 respectively. You may need to do this in-store only but if you have a Micro Center near you it's a great deal.

@waethorn,

There is nothing wrong with having checklists, and in fact even in my own environment I have a list of critical things that I look for on behalf of my users.

But that said, it's impossible to checklist everything unless you take the time to click every single button and test every option, and well, if you have that kind of time you have a very boring job.

I find a combination of guinea pigging on MY personal and work systems to be effective tests of end-user day-to-day usability and controlled testing with one highly-technical and one low-tech user to be more beneficial to checklisting, since I get real-world experiences and feedback.

Afterall, if my users can't use it effectively and efficiently, it doesn't matter how much functionality it has.

@GT2L:

In my business, training is also done in a controlled manner.  My staff are required to do online training from Microsoft's partner sites and successfully pass the tests in order to print out their certificate of completion.  That's when they're allowed to use any updated software for regular day-to-day work.  I've found Microsoft's training system to be very thorough.  

I have a couple of people that test software early though, so they get an early look at beta versions and such.  Their responsibility is to test all the previously mentioned aspects of software.  Notice how I mentioned functionality though.  That's a key point that is tested thoroughly so that users are directed to their assigned software usage scenarios, and can have questions answered during training, but not so much after final deployment.  We have our own in-house training system that works extremely well, and my workers are very proficient because of it.

GoodThings2Life

"But that said, it's impossible to checklist everything unless you take the time to click every single button and test every option, and well, if you have that kind of time you have a very boring job."

Which is why adoption of Windows and Office in large corporations very often takes a year or so. Doing a checklist that you'll have to support is a very time consuming process. Individual users don't do it but when you're planning a 20,000 seat migration you don't tend to do it without a very long, boring process.

"Afterall, if my users can't use it effectively and efficiently, it doesn't matter how much functionality it has."

Our functionality testing is not entirely about quantity.

If there is a new feature that optimizes existing workflows, our testing team puts together a proposal on how to implement it and train users so that they become more proficient workers, even if it means that they'll have to give up old ways of doing things.  Sometimes that's because there's some new feature that wasn't there before, or sometimes because of one that has been completely redesigned.  In either case, that's what we test for.

Nice ads, Paul:

"Genuine Windows Vista

2007 Digital Download from 34.95$ on Retail Versions

www.shoparhive.com"