Migration, Productivity, and Sine Language

Joel Shore

While at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, I had an opportunity to sit down and discuss with Microsoft some issues it faces as Vista and Office 2007 hit the streets just a few days from now. In my 30 minutes with Julie Larson-Green, corporate vice president of program management for Microsoft's Windows Experience, we covered a lot of ground. It is Larson-Green who has lead the user-interface design for Office XP, Office 2003, and now the revolutionary 2007 Office System. You'll not easily find anyone more brilliant or pleasant in Redmond. We agreed on some points, disagreed on others, and had a few chuckles along the way. Though not much in the way of new information was imparted, I was impressed by a simple fact: Microsoft understands and has come to accept that customer acceptance will take time.