Exchange 12 and Office 12 - Review

I have not talked much about Exchange 12 or Office 12 (2007). I attending some webcasts and a meeting held at Microsoft about Exchange 12, it looks really cool.. Requirements are a bit steep. The ESM console has been changed, again, hopefully in a more logical manor. There is even more integration with Office, Exchange, VOIP, IM, etc… With the introduction of even more things that tie your environment together has a tendency of breaking.

So… I had to give Office 12 a try. I had Beta 1, in which was buggy as all hell. Much like my Mac experience, Poof, where did my application go? It shutdown – hopefully you saved. The ribbon bar, common functions that people use all the time, takes time to get a handle on it. Some things that I use all the time, like “save as” are not there. But, do not fear, you can customize an additional menu bar with all the things that are missing. I just downloaded and installed the new rev. Beta 2, which seems to be a little more stable. It has not crashed on me yet.

I really like what they did with Outlook. Much like Office 2003 (11), you have the same Mail / Mail folders view, they have added a To-Do Bar that has a calendar, events for the week and task bar. I really like this feature. Having a calendar and what I have scheduled right there for me to look at. LOVE IT. They have also added a feature of color coding emails, I don’t really use it or like it. I could see some sales or executive using this feature, but it really does nothing for me.

Also, they have build in an RSS feed into your Outlook client. Kinda cool, if you are into RSS feeds. I setup a couple which I look at, on a weekly basis.

All in all, looks cool and would like to see what the final product will shake out to become.