SoftMaker.com

Any plans for Office/Presentations for Linux? I didn't see anything on the projects list about Office 2008 for Linux so I thought I would ask. Is that going to happen? I'm curious as we are looking at migrating some of our users over to Linux and the cross-platform / cross-format capabilities would be most appreciated. I saw but, there hasn't seemed to have been any movement on the Linux version. Are you guys really waiting to do the Linux port until you are done with a mobile version? Does, Windows Mobile generally take precedence over Linux full suite releases or is this just a single version issue?

OOo is attractive price wise but compatibility is key between file formats and interaction with Outlook/Exchange. So far in my very limited testing PM has already shown itself to work better with Public Folders and .xls files than Calc so, that in combination with what seems to be very comparable rendering of data in comparison to Excel makes Office2008 worth a second look.

Also, will your new database application be VBA compatible or have native support for .mdb files? And lastly, do you have any plans for porting Office2008 for Windows Mobile to the Palm or Blackberry platforms? WM is nice (I use 5 myself) but most of our execs run on Treos or Blackberries.

Thanks in Advance!

Hello,

currently we are working on conversions of SoftMaker Office 2008 for several platforms, i.e. for Pocket PCs, Windows CE and Linux. The first one of this list that will be released is SoftMaker Office 2008 for Pocket PCs. The Linux and Windows CE version will follow only few months later. Regarding DataMaker 2008: We will support ODBC driver, so Access files and other database formats will work with DataMaker. Regarding your last question: Currently there are no plans for a Blackberry or Palm OS version.

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Alexander Mühl
SoftMaker Software GmbH

So, in that that Pocket PC version is now currently only in Beta what sort of time frame are you thinking for the Linux release?

Thanks!

I can't give you an exactly release date but I think the Linux version will follow 3-4 months after the PPC release.

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Alexander Mühl
SoftMaker Software GmbH