Daniel de Oliveira

The following is the release announcemnet from Jeremy White of CodeWeavers (CrossOver):

Hi Folks,

I am pleased to announce that we have shipped CrossOver 7 for both Macintosh and Linux. New in Version 7 is support for Microsoft Office 2007, dramatically improved support for Outlook 2003 and Internet Explorer 6, and a broad range of improvements that should bring improvements to all Windows applications.

For our Linux customers, it also brings expanded support for most Adobe programs, with Photoshop CS and CS2 working particularly well.

For our Macintosh customers, this release also brings a change in our product mix. We are now providing “CrossOver Mac Standard” and “CrossOver Mac Professional”. The new Standard product will mirror

the Linux Standard product, in that it will be a lower priced product with more basic support and no multiple user support. The new CrossOver Mac Professional product replaces the existing CrossOver Mac product. It continues to have our best support, support for multiple users, and, CrossOver Mac Pro continues to come with a complimentary copy of CrossOver Games. If you have purchased CrossOver Mac in the past, you have been automatically upgraded to a CrossOver Mac Pro license.

Finally, another major benefit of 7.0 is that it includes many of the elements of Wine 1.0, which was also released today. This is a major milestone for us, and for the Wine project. Our many years of work, and your many years of supporting our work, have enabled us to help bring Wine to this milestone. I am very proud to have been part of this, and very grateful for all the support of our customers, advocates, and fellow Wine developers.

If you are an existing CrossOver customer with an active support entitlement, you can visit our web site to download this latest version: www.codeweavers.com
You will need to log in with the email and password that you used when
purchasing CrossOver. Please write to info@codeweavers.com if you need help with this process.

Thanks again for all your support, and I hope that you enjoy CrossOver 7!

Cheers,

Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers

—
Version 7.0 Changelog:

New application support:

• Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)
• Adobe Photoshop CS and CS2
• Added support for the “Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system” so that Office 2003 can open Office 2007 documents

Bug fixes:

• Greatly improved online banking integration in Quicken 2007 and 2008
• Greatly improved Outlook behavior, particularly with Exchange servers
• Fixed service pack support for several versions of Office
• Improved IE support in win2000 and winxp bottles (though win98 is still better)
• Improved support for modern Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu)
• Fixed a seriously horrible interaction with the Logitech Control Center documents from Office 2007
• This version also includes countless Wine fixes and synchronizes with Wine 1.0.
• Many small bugs should be fixed, and unsupported application behavior should be greatly improved.

Source: Wine Reviews

Source: http://flickr.com/photos/paintitblack/2439080330/

Yes.. I know theres a lot of office suites out there for linux.. the problem is: In my actual work, I *MUST* use the dammit OOXML for docs, spreadsheets, presentations and Visio for stuff. I personaly hate Office2007 but.. I just need it…

• Download and install crossover-game trial at codeweavers (yes, crossover games)
• Install the last wine available (Ubuntu 8.04 have a good one, gentoo ~x86 too)
• Download and install winetricks at http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
• Now, go to console and type winecfg to create your first wine configuration.
• From winetricks, install this packages: dotnet11, dotnet20, gdiplus, msxml3, msxml4, msxml6, vcrun2005sp1 and vcrun2008.
• Now, go to /home/<youruser>/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32 and rename rpcrt4.dll to something like rpcrt4.dll.bak
• Copy /opt/cxgames/lib/wine/rpcrt4.dll.so to /home/<youruser>/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/rpcrt4.dll (yes, without the .so).
• Mount office cd with -o unhide option (I don’t know why, but if you automount, the cd will miss some files).
• Go to directory of cdrom and type wine setup.exe
• Now you can uninstall crossover trial, remove the rpcrt4.dll used and put the old one in this place (now office 2007 will work with the old one).

Update 1: It’s a good one to install riched20 and riched30 to have a better look on fonts.
Update 2: 4j4x translate this post to indonesian, check here
Update 3: MS Project and MS Outlook doesn’t work (project claims to not being installed to current user, I think this is just a registry problem).
Update 4: MS Visio and Office updates works as well.
Update 5: Alain reports the .Net 1.1 asks for ie5 (this doesn’t occurs with me), but without the .net 1.1 the installation works.
Update 6: I don’t know why but Powerpoint doesn’t work to everyone.
Update 7: Portuguese version here

Thanks for all testing and reporting.

Since my job are freak about using office 2007 docs (and Im freak about not using windows), I just trying to find some way to do this inside linux.

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First of all, let me say that I’m not defending any version of windows, so this is become the same old bullshit all the time.

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Acording to The Register and Windows Vista Team Blog Site, Microsoft will release SP1 for Windows Vista with “a lot of improvements in security and performance.

<ironic mode>Maybe the SP1 will format your actual vista installation, migrate all data and install a new and clean realease of a linux distribution called “Linux Vista”, to obtain better performance. IMHO, is the only way to get more perfomance using this load of crap.</ironic mode>

Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.

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First, Ubuntu reject Microsoft Deal, then.. Red Hat rejects the same offer…

Now.. few days away, Mandriva rejects the same fucking deal again…

WTF is happening here? Some kind of despair? In one time, Microsoft wants to process everyone, now, Microsoft wants a deal with everyone.

Next week I’m leading the “Open Source, the Web, Interoperability, and Microsoft” panel at Mix07 in Vegas, my first Microsoft conference. Naturally, I’ve been pondering the topic so I don’t end up on stage with my pants around my ankles. The more I think about it, the more I think Microsoft loves open source—and not just because they’re fools if they don’t.

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WITH TWO OVERLAPPING events, Microsoft admitted what we have been saying all along, Vista, aka Windows Me Two (Me II), is a joke that no one wants.It did two unprecedented things this week that frankly stunned us.

Dell announced that it would be offering XP again on home PCs. The second that Vista came out, Microsoft makes it very hard for you to sell anything other than Me II. It can’t do this on the business side because it would be laughed out the door, but for the walking sheep class, well, you take what you are shovelled.

This is classic abusive monopoly behaviour, Microsoft wrote the modern book on it. It pulled all the major OEMs in by twisting their arms with the usual methods, and they again all fell into line. Never before has anyone backpedalled on this, to do so would earn you the wrath of Microsoft.

But Dell just did. This means that Me II sales are at least as bad as we think, the software and driver situation is just as miserable, and Dell had no choice but to buck the trend. If anyone thinks this is an act of atonement for foisting such a steaming pile on us, think again, it doesn’t care about the consumer.

What happened is, the OEMs revolted in the background and forced Microsoft’s hand. This is a big neon sign above Me II saying ‘FAILURE’. Blink blink blink. OK, Me II won’t fail, Microsoft has OEMs whipped and threatened into a corner, it will sell, but you can almost hear the defectors marching toward Linux. This is a watershed.

The other equally monumental Me II failure? Gates in China launching a $3 version of bundled XP. Why is this not altruism? Well, it goes back to piracy and how it helped enforce the MS monopoly. If you can easily pirate Windows, Linux has no price advantage, they both cost zero.

With Me II, Microsoft made it very hard to pirate. It is do-able, you can use the BIOS hack and probably a host of others, but the point is, it raised the bar enough so lots of people have to buy it. Want to bet that in a country with $100 average monthly salary, people aren’t going to shell out $299 for Me II Broken Edition?

What did MS do? It dropped the price about 100x or so. I can’t say this is unprecedented, when it made Office 2003 hard to pirate it had to backpedal with the student edition for about $150. This time though, things are much more desperate.

If you fit Microsoft’s somewhat convoluted definition of poor, it still wants to lock you in, you might get rich enough to afford the full-priced stuff someday. It is at a dangerous crossroads, if its software bumps up the price of a computer by 100 per cent, people might look to alternatives.

That means no Me II DRM infection lock in, no mass migration to the newer Office obfuscated and patented file formats, and worse yet, people might utter the W word. Yes, you guessed it, ‘why’. People might ask why it is sticking with the MS lock in, and at that point, it is in deep trouble.

So, it did the unthinkable, and dropped the price. I won’t bother to hunt down all the exec quotes saying how people can’t afford clean water would be overjoyed to sell kidneys to upgrade to the new version of Office, but they are out there. This was a sacred cow, and it is now hamburger backed up against the wall.

These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested three years ago. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can’t compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times.

What we are seeing is an unprecedented shift of power. It is also an unprecedented admission of failure. And the funniest part about the moves made? They are the wrong things to do. Microsoft is in deep trouble.

Source: The Inquirer

You can also read how Microsoft sells only 244 copies of Vista in China.