Come June 16 and Microsoft will start roll-out of its Office 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) through automatic updates, the company said.
A company spokesperson said customers who haven't already installed Office 2007 SP1 and who've chosen to receive updates automatically will be the ones to start receiving SP1 as early as June 16. However the roll-out being gradual, not every customer will get Office 2007 SP1 through automatic update on the same day, i.e. June 16.
Microsoft reiterated its position via a blog post that said, "Think of the 16th as the earliest possible start of distribution and that no sooner than that date will SP1 start to become available to customers' systems via this channel." The post promptly added, "This is necessary to ensure that our service infrastructure can meet the enormous demand for the service pack."
The software maker is trying to live up to its promise of giving at least 30-days notice before making Office Service Packs available through its automatic update service. Office 2007 SP1 was made available for download via the Microsoft Web site five months ago on Dec 11, 2007. Since that time, Microsoft claims it has had several million downloads and generally, 'a very good reaction' from customers.
As regards rolling-out Service Packs in phases, Microsoft is of the opinion that this gives the market plenty of time to evaluate the software besides giving the company itself time to address specific customer concerns. The same strategy was deployed by Redmond for Office 2003 SP3.
Office 2007 SP1 addresses stability, performance, and security issues (software bugs) that have hitherto caused the program to crash plus advancements to help customers better protect their systems, Microsoft said. Importantly, SP1 incorporates a controversial new document format called Office Open XML, which was approved just last month as open standard by the International Standards Organization (ISO).
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