14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft made available for download the third service pack for Office 2003 in mid September 2007. For over four months now, Office 2003 users have been able to access the latest upgrade for Office 2003 and enjoy a range of enhancements across the table from performance boost, to security, reliability and stability improvements, as well as better integration with Windows Vista. In another month, the Redmond company will start delivering Office 2003 Service Pack 3 via Automatic Distribution. This scenario will impact directly all users of Office 2003 that have not yet installed the service pack, and that are running the suite on Windows Vista and on Windows XP.
"We will be distributing SP3 automatically via Microsoft Update approximately 30 days from January 27th. We say approximately because the availability will happen gradually and not everyone will see it at the same time. Think of the 27th as the marker and no sooner than 30 days from then is when SP3 will start to become available to customers' systems," explained a member of the Microsoft Update team.
At the end of the past week, Microsoft provided a heads up, with a 30-day notice until Office 2003 SP3 would be made available via Update automatic distribution. At the same time, the Redmond company is cooking the delivery of Office 2007 Service Pack 1. SP1 for the Office 2007 System will also be dropped through the Microsoft Update automatic distribution, just like Office 2003 SP3. The company promised to announce Office 2007 users in advance.
"This announcement gels with the policy we made public in conjunction with the release of SP1 for the 2007 Microsoft Office System (no sooner than 3 months we will give customers 30 days notice that we are going to use Microsoft Update automatic distribution). This policy seems to have worked really well with SP3 because it gave the market plenty of time to evaluate the service pack, gave us time to address concerns, and now we can push it to the hundreds of millions of users who depend on us to keep them secure, up to date, and productive and they can be comfortable and informed with regards to the improvements they are getting," the MU team member added.