http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/02/12/understanding-the-latest-maps-updates-live-meeting-wednesday-11-30-am-pst.aspx

A common question at every venue on our EVO tour was "when are the products coming to the Action Pack?".

There have been an awful lot of questions around the January Action Pack recently and it continues to

There have been an awful lot of questions around the January Action Pack recently and it continues to

David,

First of all I'd like say a *huge* thank you to you for taking up the reins on this issue and persevering until we got answers (and good answers too!).

I would like one further piece of clarification regarding using existing software in my action pack. While you state clearly that we can continue using Windows XP and Office 2003, what about server apps? Can I, for example, continue to use SQL Server 2000 and SBS2003 R1 ?

Thanks

Paul

Thank you for the update above... however there seems to be a problem with the upgrade..

Scenario 1. Install vista na purchase fpp ultimate upgrade and allow the maps to expire.

How would I reinstall the operating system in case of a hard drive failure as the windows anytime upgrade does not give you a new license key! Further to this., windows anytime upgrade requires an ACTIVATED version of vista which since the maps license would have expired would no longer be possible..

Phew....Although welcome, it seems to me that this has not been thought through properly and microsoft is moving the goal posts whilst mid game.  Can you tell us which way we should kick our ball??

David,

I know all us Scotsmen look the same, what with the red hair and kilts and all, but despite the rumours we're not all called "Angus" :-)

Paul

That's good news about the Vista Ultimate.

Thanks for letting us know.

Colin

PingBack from http://www.colindiponio.com/2007/02/13/microsoft-actionpack-jan-2007-and-windows-vista-ultimate/

A "clean" install means just that; not multiple installs. I fail to see why anyone refers to this “install twice”, or anything other than an installation to a new unformatted drive as “clean”. There should NEVER be anything .old anywhere!

Fact remains, all of us are angered at the bully tactics of Microsoft on this action pack release. In fact, I can’t tell you of anyone, that’s right, anyone of my colleagues who have used it as of yet. Sad to say, if MS is so worried about copyright issues, just have them send a couple dozen agents to China, where much of its products are manufactured. You can buy anything on any street side stand/ open market, software and DVD movies for about a buck or two.

Nice site David.

The Vista Action pack issue is one that I was disssapointed on but that is life. Your suggestion to upgrade is great but Australia does not offer Windows Anytime Upgrade which is actualy affects customers and Action pack subscribers. I could go on but obviously this is not for Australia but your readers can take comfort that you have an affordable Upgrade path that not all countries enjoy. The best I can find here for a box upgrade is about 190 GBP!

[Please also read the Action Pack FAQ on this blog at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2007/02/13/windows-vista-windows-xp-office-2003-and-office-2007-action-pack-update-my-faq.aspx

I am currently with XP and Excel 03. Will MS Vista support 03 XL data

Dave-- A simple question from a novice. I have Vista Home Premium on an HP. I also have a new Office 2003 CD set with key. Can I just load the Office 2003 onto the Vista system without problems?

Ed

Is there any news about 64 bit editions of Vista in the Action Pack?

Can you enlighten us on how we can get/install the 64 bit verson of Vista Business?  Will the link provided to get 64 bit media on the MS website work with an Action Pack CD key? It mentions a retail version, which I assume the Action Pack is not classed as.

Nice FAQ, answered some of my queries, that's for sure.  I do agree with some of the comments above though and am reconsidering whether to renew my subscription next time round.

I advise large organisations on mass OS deployments and hope to be continuing to do this with Vista. I need to be able to test automated deploymnents of Enterprise versions of Vista. Are the version of Vista in the Action pack or the OEM version sufficiently similar for deployment purposes to be appropriate?

Action Pack has been very generous up until now. I was expecting to receive a few flavours of Vista such as x64 and even Ultimate. How can we talk up the benefits of Ultimate if we can't use it ourselves (without paying the equivalent of half the Action Pack subscription to upgrade)?

I agree with the person who said the Vista Business disc did not provide a clean install - clean is the wrong word to use. I have not used the upgrade disc and I doubt I will unless I need to test out the upgrade process for a reason.

Instead I bought a new laptop with Vista Ultimate pre-installed by the manufacturer. It's crashed twice in the 4 days I've had it. While giving a presentation to a room full of customers the sidebar and network centre window crashed. Then the window that told me about the crash also crashed. I closed the laptop with embarrassment before everyone exchanged their own Vista horror stories. I found some other bugs too, like sometimes new windows open behind existing windows. Don't get me started on the lack of a reasonable backup utility. Suddenly ntbackup looks like a pretty good program! I cannot recommend Vista and I will not be installing it on business or test machines until SP1 fixes things. It seems to take longer to boot/shutdown than XP which, apart from the less fashionable GUI, is a pretty stable OS. Shame it takes a couple of years to get it to that state after each new release. Vista should have had another 6 months in the incubator but I guess the shareholders were getting anxious. ;-)

On a brighter note I would like to applaud Microsoft for giving us the Enterprise edition of Office 2007 - excellent. By the same token of why they didn't give us a full version of Vista, why did we get the full version of the *flagship* Office product? Hey, I'm not complaining, it's just that their logic is inconsistent.

One oddity about Office Enterprise 2007 - it highlights the new inconsistency of the GUI. Only the Word/Excel/PPT products have the new ribbon interface while the rest of the suite has the old interface and no new radical features. To be honest I find the old interface faster to use (less mouse mileage!) and for more advanced users it's easier to locate the features you need as menus list the names of the tools one after the other, whereas the ribbon sprawls everything out over the width of the window mixing various sizes of icons and text - harder for the brain to collate and identify the information.

Great blog by the way. Sorry my comment is rather long.

I too am a little annoyed that the upgrade to Vista Ultimate is a "PAID FOR" upgrade. You should at least make this VERY clear at the beginning of this blog.

I have Vista installed on several machines at the moment - one laptop pretty much crashes or locks up all the time and does not have 100% functionality. The HDD thrashes for up to an hour after logon and then does not shut down properly. Another machine is more stable, but I still experience the occasional “black screen of death” and IE/explorer crashes.

I do like the new office interface, however. I must admit that altering certain deep rooted options are now a little difficult, however, a lot more options and facilities are available the average user.  The pictorial option is simple to navigate and understand (once used to it) and will help users with difficulties such as dyslexia – myself included.

The recommended minimum memory for a Vista PC is stated as 1GB.  However, it has been suggested that to run Vista Ultimate the minimum memory should be raised to 3GB.

Is this a true statement??

A 1GB minimum memory is advised for Vista.  However, it has been suggested to me that to run Vista Ultimate 64 bit version a 3GB minimum is necessary.  We have an active enquiry for this and I am trying to spec a PC to meet the requirement.  Can you comment please

One further comment - is it now possible in Vista to be able to join a machine to multiple domains, so that a laptop can be seen as part of a clients network (or even a home/work domain config) - or is this not a good idea?

Hi Bob,

With regard to the question 'How can I get the x64 version of Vista / Office?':

1) The x64 version of Windows Vista is shipped with Vista Ultimate Edition, and available on request for the cost of shipping and handling for all other versions (except Starter). The same key will activate either version.

2) There is no x64 version of Office at the present time.

Hope this helps!

Today I was chatted with the partner facing guys in our department, trying to find out what their most

Hi David:

Just purchased a HP with Vista OS. The screensaver does not hold most of the time. Have to constantly go and initiate the settings and get lucky 3 out of 10 time approx..

Also when downloading for new updates on Wondows Live Toolbar- i receive error messages of files requiring updates and can not continue..

Also,WEbroot spy sweeper popped up lettin  me know of a more current update . During dowmload, it failed and i never heard anymore.

Are these glitches in Vista or are there fixes available,

Thanks

Hi David,

Office 2007 doesnt seem to be functioning the same as the Enterprise version as I am unable to run the Office Customization Tool and get the following error when running setup.exe /admin from my network installation point.

"Files necessary to run the Office Customization Tool were not found. Run Setup from the installation point of a qualifying product"

This error should only appear when running the Office Customization Tool from a retail version.

DVD Part no. X13-35827 EN Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007

It has been suggested it due to retail keys but no keys are entered at this stage..

Thanks,

Hi David,

I forgot to mention the same error occurs using the DVD, running procmon shows setup.exe cannot find 74 files its looking for in admin mode.

I have listed files here so I dont bog down the blog.

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx?query=tone&dg=microsoft.public.office.setup&cat=en_us_642d5640-c1ba-43c3-a224-b3ec1473346c&lang=en&cr=us&pt=&catlist=&dglist=&ptlist=&exp=&sloc=en-us&mid=9c4162cc-cfed-4f8c-be4a-007fb810a9ed

Will try and get media replaced with a different part no,

Cheers!

Oops posted wrong http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.office.setup&mid=1d0b7419-58d8-48af-8c86-5237e2f20bcd&sloc=en-us

Hi David,

I have both Office 2003 (just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and Office 2007 (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) installed on an XP machine. If I only run Office 2003 apps everything is fine. When I run an Office 2007 app, I have to wait for "something" to be reconfigured. Then the Office 2007 apps run fine. If I then run an Office 2003 app, I have to wait while "something" is reinstalled. What's going on?

Hi David

Can we not have SBS Cougar beta and/or Longhorn Beta added to AP?

Mark

2007 Vista Student and Office Edition does not allow me to create one line spacing in Address Headings but okay within the body of the letter, is this a glitch. I have never experienced this in my former Word Programs. In the dialog box it does specify single spacing. Any advice would be appreciated.

After hours of attempts to install Office 2003 on my new Gateway with Vista Home Premium, I give up. After the first installation, I could for the life of me get Vista to associate .doc files with the Office 2003 version of Word. I could launch Word 03 just fine, and then get it to open the older word docs, but even when I saved a new file, Vista thought it belonged to wordpad.

I tried all of the obvious things to reassociate .doc files,, and several registry-level non-obvious ones. Nothing worked. PowerPoint and Excel 2003 seemed to work fine, it was just the Word thing. OK, try again.

So I gamely uninstalled Office 2003 and reinstalled it, but that made things worse. Now my circa-2000 .ppt files do not open at all in PowerPoint 2003. It tries to open them, fails, and then blandly informs me that they are not, in fact, .ppt files.

Well, I've had it with Office, and as soon as I can afford it, with Windows.

For now I'm going OpenOffice, which seems to work just fine under Vista. Thank God for open source projects whose proprietors are no good at lying.

And then once this box is fully amortized, I'm finally going Macintosh. I'm about the last serious software craftsman I know who has not made the switch.

You MS guys can blather on all you like about how healthy and normal everything is, but I am starting to see MS programmers carrying Macs to the software conferences, so I think your denial may soon be wearing thin.

[moderated]

Thank you David for host this site. I am having the same problem as Patrick experienced between Office 2003 and Vista Home Premium except on an HP machine. I have followed the same steps as he did install/uninstall office 2003. With the same results. I have found a work around - if I copy the word exe file out of the office11 folder and put it in the office folder(one level up) then word will associate to doc files. I didn't have this problem until I upgraded from Office 2000. Everything was properly associated until the upgrade.

Thank you again,

I am so glad I found this site before I jumped into an Action Pack purchase. Although there is no denying the value of the AP with regards to the server software included, I was initially attracted to it because of the OS and Office software. However it seems that in regards to the OS software the AP is pretty much useless.

Since the AP includes only upgrade versions of Vista any new machines I purchase for my business are likely to be machines with OEM versions of Windows since this is a lot cheaper than buying a naked PC and installing a retail version or even volume license versions with the minimum order quantity of 5. And the cost difference between a machine with XP Pro installed or Vista Business is usually a big fat zero. So why would I buy a machine with XP Pro and use the action pack to upgrade to Vista Business when I can buy it with Vista Business in the first place for little or no additional cost? It becomes an even more pointless exercise in the near future when XP Pro will no longer be available on OEM machines.

The AP still offers value as soon as I want Office or any of the other applications on my machines or when I have a need to use the server software. But with regards to the OS stuff it is pointless.

In my view they might as well just remove Vista Business from the AP. For new customers the Vista upgrade in AP offers absolutely no value whatsoever, especially once XP is dead and gone. I mean what a seliing point that is, get upgrades to Business Vista for 10 machines, oh but remember you have to buy a machine with an OS on it and we don't allow distribution of XP on new machines anymore so the machines you buy will need to have Vista on it! And as a last random thought, does the AP Business Vista upgrade allow upgrading from Vista Home or Basic? Or will MS really be selling the AP with Vista Business upgrades when the only viable option for new PC purchases will be machines with Business Vista on them in the first place?

I understand that MS are trying to reduce piracy but that really is no excuse for having elements in the AP pack that quite frankly make them look ridiculous and also in the long run will reduce their new sales of the AP and alienate their existing AP customers.

Apologies for the rant, but it really is a ridiculous situation as far as Vista is concerned.