[Macpartners] Office for Mac 2011 - Current Status and Recommendation to WAIT

[Patrick M McNeal]

Good morning,

Earlier today, Microsoft released Office for Mac 2011, their latest productivity suite for the Macintosh platform. Based on preliminary testing of prerelease versions, Information Services and Technology (IS&T) recommends that Macintosh users WAIT to upgrade and continue to use their current version of Office while IS&T completes its review and testing of Office for Mac 2011.

Why Wait?
As with any new product, especially one that has as many under-the-hood changes as Office for Mac 2011, there are some incompatibilities, bugs, and an associated learning curve. Also, some third-party programs, such as EndNote X4, are not compatible. Based on past experience, IS&T expects that Microsoft will release frequent updates addressing some of these incompatibilities.

Licensing
Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 is covered by MIT's Microsoft Campus Agreement<http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/msca/overview>. MIT departments, faculty and staff may install this software on any MIT-owned computer, provided that it will only be used by current MIT faculty, staff or students for MIT purposes only. MIT students are not covered under the general terms of MIT's Microsoft Campus Agreement. Students should contact the software liaison<http://ist.mit.edu/services/software/msca/office-pro> for their department, lab, or center (DLC) to determine if their DLC funds student access to Microsoft Office as part of MIT's Microsoft Campus Agreement. Students who are not covered can obtain Microsoft Office at academic pricing through educational resellers such as GovConnection<https://web.mit.edu/ecat/ecat3/personalorders.html?Submit=Place+Personal+Order>.

Outlook for Mac
Office for Mac 2011 includes Outlook for Mac 2011, an entirely new email and calendaring client. Though initial testing indicates this will be a viable solution, IS&T recommends that Microsoft Exchange users remain on their current Exchange client (e.g., Entourage, OWA, Apple Mail) while we thoroughly review and test Outlook for Mac 2011's Exchange support.

Support
The IS&T Service Desk will not be providing installation or technical support for Office for Mac 2011 at this time. Until it does, IS&T recommends that only early adopters, who are able to support themselves and their users, download and use Office for Mac 2011.

Installer
Early adopters can download the Office of Mac 2011 installer from IS&T's Microsoft Campus Agreement for MS Office Professional download site<https://msca.mit.edu/cgi-bin/msoffice> [certificates<http://ist.mit.edu/services/certificates> required]. To reduce costs, IS&T will not be providing installation media to software liaisons.

Please direct questions regarding Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 to office-mac-release at mit.edu<mailto:office-mac-release at mit.edu>.

Regards,
Patrick

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick McNeal
Macintosh Platform Coordinator
Systems Engineering, Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/attachments/20101026/776d03f9/attachment.htm