Microsoft's Office 2000 hits turbulent waters

Microsoft's rollout of Office 2000 and its product deployment conference in Nice, France have been heavily criticised by one of the company's beta testers.

Wolfgang Berchem, group information technology manager for Heidelberger Zement, said: "I've had to delay the rollout [of Office 2000] because the pricing for the language packs is still not available. They cannot even tell me what size the file will be and that's not good enough."

Heidelberger is a manufacturer of construction materials - the company has been beta-testing Office 2000 and is looking to use it over 5,000 seats. The language packs are for the various localised versions of Office 2000.

Berchem said Microsoft should be honest about any problems it has with the product: "Otherwise I assume it is bad news."

He also feared a move to subscription pricing for Office products: "I think they [Microsoft] will get us by the hair - we'll have to pay more."

Berchem was also unhappy with the actual conference. "It has been really horrible. We want to make the product with Microsoft but this conference has not given me the information I need. As a tester I think I know more than the people here giving the talks," he said.

Bob Crissman, group product manager of desktop applications division at Microsoft, said: "The prices are determined by the subsidiaries - they are run independently so I cannot tell you exactly when Germany will announce pricing. The language pack is meant to be a break-even proposition not a way to leverage prices."

Crissman said most of the conference speakers in Nice were the same as at the US event and feedback from there had been good. "We try to get the people who actually wrote the code and developed these products - they might not all be very comfortable with public speaking, but they know the products," he claimed.