As many are already aware, Microsoft commercially released its much anticipated operating system, Vista, and its new software suite, Office 2007, on January 30. There is tremendous excitement in the press about the new products and we wanted to update the community about their status at Tufts.
The Tufts IT support community recognizes that the adoption of Windows Vista and Office 2007 will have a major effect on the systems and applications running within the university. We have been actively testing Vista against the hardware, systems and applications within our computing environment. By working collaboratively with application developers, system owners, and our vendors we have been able to alleviate many of the initial issues, but there is still much work to be done in order to prepare Tufts for the arrival of Windows Vista.
Each support organization will determine when they feel comfortable offering Vista and Office 2007 to their customers. At this time, we do not support the new products and do not recommend that they be installed on the computers of Tufts faculty and staff.
With the release of Office 2007, there are also numerous changes to some of the most popular applications on campus, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Access. As the learning curve is quite significant, and there are some backwards compatibility issues with previous versions of the applications, we do not recommend that end users adopt Office 2007 immediately.
Comprehensive documentation and training will be offered in the coming months as members of the Tufts community begin to transition to the new products. We believe that this process will take some time and we will continue to support our customers throughout the transition period and beyond.
For more information about the university’s adoption of Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, contact your FSP or local support organization. You may also visit the UIT website for updates as new information becomes available.
