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Issue 32, Winter 2005
by Larry Gilbert
Western has long had access to the latest Microsoft software, ensuring that our graduates have a distinct advantage when they join the world of work. Thanks to a very generous donation from Western alumni who now work for Microsoft, this tradition will continue with the introduction of Office 2003 during spring quarter.
We owe many thanks for this donation to Vice President Stephanie Bowers and Mark Bagley from the Western Foundation. They worked very hard to set up a 'giving' program among alumni at Microsoft that resulted in the donation of 2,100 copies of Office 2003. This is enough copies for the Office 2003 software to be distributed to all computer labs and classrooms on campus, as well as to all employees.
Among the many advantages you can expect are:
- Access to advanced desktop anti-spam features within Outlook 2003
- Outlook 2003 also provides new search folders, desktop email alerts and side-by-side calendars
- Word 2003 adds new editing and formatting lockdown features, including the ability to lock down portions of Word documents to prevent editing
- Ability to provide security protection for individual documents and emails
- Publisher 2003 (a desktop publishing solution)
Following the recommendation of the Academic Technology Committee, Microsoft Office software in classrooms and computer labs will not be upgraded to Office 2003 until after the end of spring quarter. This will allow both faculty and students to finish the school year without having to change Office versions in mid-stream. Faculty who use Office for instruction should thus plan to utilize the new version (i.e. Office 2003) beginning with the summer quarter. Please keep that in mind when ordering textbooks and planning your syllabus for the next school year.
Office 2003 will be offered free to faculty and staff for work-related use beginning no later than April 1. ATUS will send out a message to all employees as soon as the updated software becomes available for distribution. Upgrading from the current version of Office will simply require that you click on a web link in our message that will automatically download Office 2003.
Those of us who have been testing Office 2003 for a while find that there are a number of distinct advantages to the upgrade - with few (if any) disadvantages.
For a complete review of the advantages of upgrading to Office 2003, visit the Microsoft website. |
