Office 2003 end-of-the-road June 30 for OEMs.

Microsoft has announced that June 30, 2007 will be the end date for OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers, e.g. Dell, HP, Sony, etc.) to bundle Office 2003 with new PC's. After that it will be Office 2007 only. This comes only 5 months after the new office productivity suite's release.

I've been using it for about three or four months now. Be prepared for a shock. It's different, a lot different. One thing to be particularly aware of is that the native format for saving Office 2007 documents is the new (and open) Open Document format which is based on the widely-supported XML scheme. The bad news is that this is not compatible with older versions of the Office Suite. Fortunately, the Save As menu offers a helpful and easy-to-access Save As Word (or Excel of Power Point) 97-2003 feature.

That said, the Microsoft Open License program offers business users the opportunity to buy licenses with the rights to operate and install two generations back of the Office Suite. One license allows the enterprise to install either Office 2007, 2003 or XP. Yet another reason to eschew the OEM Office license.