Hundreds of Office XP Worldwide Launch Events Occurring Around the World, Many Headlined by Microsoft Executives, Including Bill Gates And Steve Ballmer

REDMOND, Wash., May 21, 2001 — As Microsoft® Office XP heads to retail stores next week, customers are signing up by the thousands to get a look at the revolutionary new version of Office. Office XP will launch on May 31 at more than 100 launch events in the United States between May 31 and June 2 and several hundred additional launch events worldwide over the next few weeks. As part of the launch festivities, Microsoft Corp. executives, including Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, are fanning out around the globe to show off the most significant version of Office ever released. More than 100,000 customers have already signed up for the various launch events in the United States, demonstrating their excitement to learn about the innovative new experiences that Office XP delivers, including making productivity simple for individuals, enabling collaboration for teams and workgroups, and enabling flexible solutions for organizations.

“We think seeing is believing, and the Office XP launch events were designed to enable people around the world to experience Office XP,”
said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president for Office at Microsoft.
“We’re excited that there is so much interest in the product and can’t wait to show customers how Office XP can make their lives easier and transform the way they work.”

Worldwide Launch Events Led by Microsoft Executives

Office XP will be broadly available in retail stores on May 31 in 15 countries, and over 100 launch events are being held in the United States alone to launch the most significant version of Office ever released. Microsoft executives Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Raikes, Steven Sinofsky and Orlando Ayala are launching Office XP that day at events in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., London, and Houston, respectively. Attendees will have the opportunity to see Office XP demonstrations and, in many locations, try out the product through kiosks and free trial CDs. People attending the launch events will receive a $100 mail-in rebate coupon on the purchase of Office XP Professional Special Edition, a prerelease version of Microsoft Windows® XP Professional, and evaluation copies of Visio® 2002 drawing and diagramming software and SharePoint™
Portal Server. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/office/pressxp/ .

Industry Buzzing About Office XP

There is already strong industry support for Office XP as customers, partners and industry experts extol the opportunities Office XP offers individuals and businesses through ease of use innovations, collaboration tools and solutions.

“We are delighted with the feedback that we are receiving from industry experts and customers,”
Sinofsky said.
“Office XP is being described as an innovative, exciting new product with breakthrough productivity advancements, and this is exactly what we wanted to deliver to customers.”

About Office XP and Microsoft

Office XP provides a much smarter work experience for individuals, teams and organizations. Office XP makes productivity simple for individuals by helping them get the most out of Office and giving them tools they can rely on. Office XP enables collaboration for everyone by revolutionizing the way people work with others on documents and by introducing SharePoint Team Services so people can manage projects and activities via the Web. Office XP also provides a flexible way to solve business needs by offering a rich solutions platform, improved security and reliability, and tools businesses need to deploy and manage Office.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.

Microsoft, Windows, Visio and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages.

Look Who’s Talking About Office XP:


Industry Experts, Partners and Customers Share Their Praise

Quote Sheet


May 2001

New York Times’ David Pogue wrote that he found SharePoint Team Services
“exciting”
and that the new collaboration tools are a
“huge leap forward.”

— New York Times,
“State of the Art: Unearthing Office Tools Long Buried,”
By David Pogue, 5/3/01, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/03/technology/03STAT.html?searchpv=nytToday

“Office XP is busting at the bytes with new features.”

— Ed Baig
USA Today

“Word 2002 is the best writing tool on the planet.”

— Reprinted from Gregg Keizer,
“MS Word 2002,”
CNET.com, with permission from CNET Inc., copyright 1995-2001

PC Magazine: Ed Mendelson wrote that Office XP is an upgrade that
“in almost every detail is more manageable, more convenient and more reliable.”

— PC Magazine,
“XP Special Report,”
By JP Vellotti, Ed Mendelson, Craig Stinson, Kathy Werner, Dale Washburn and Jim Boyce, 4/18/01, http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/stories/reviews/0,6755,2708905,00.html

“A first look at Office XP clearly shows many compelling new innovations that make this a product people will want to get their hands on. Advancements like smart tags, SharePoint Team Services and integrated Web Services have the potential to significantly improve productivity and offer a new way to collaborate with others. I expect an entire new industry to develop around smart tags as a new way of providing in-place information and choices.”

— Amy Wohl
President
Wohl Associates Inc.

“Vanguard is very excited about the new features and functions of Microsoft Office XP, which we anticipate will have a significant impact on the daily work of our crew members using this software. In addition, the Web capabilities of Office XP coupled with its tight integration with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server make it a powerful weapon in Vanguard’s intranet arsenal.”

— Jay Llewellyn
Master architect
Corporate and International Systems
The Vanguard Group Inc.

“Office XP is an exciting new product that delivers vast productivity improvements to our organization. From smart tags to SharePointTeam Services to reliability innovations, Office XP delivers a wealth of new features that will benefit everyone in our organization.”

— Michel Fouchard
CIO
Timex Corp.

“Office XP offers a wide breadth of great solutions, like SharePoint Team Services, that will significantly improve the productivity and collaboration capabilities of people in our organization. Because of the ease of use and intuitive nature of Office XP, people can communicate and work with others in an efficient, seamless way without having to learn entirely new tools.”

— Andy Drooker
Vice president of Network System Architecture and Research and Development
Turner Broadcasting Inc.

“We’re using Office XP as a platform to build rich, custom instructional applications based on the standard data analysis tools in Excel. The power of Office XP lets us use Excel as the analytical engine for analyzing and displaying dynamic content that significantly changes Wharton’s educational experience.”

— Deirdre Woods
Senior director, Wharton Computing and Information Technology
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

“Office XP provides great opportunities for solution providers to take advantage of technologies like XML, extensible smart tags and Office Web Components to quickly deliver the custom solutions customers need. We can create custom solutions in the familiar Office development environment that take advantage of the advanced capabilities in Office XP to provide entirely new opportunities for our customers.”

— Rand Morimoto
President
Convergent Computing

“Our company is experienced in building Web-based solutions with Office XP, using the Office Web Components to expose Excel’s rich analytical capabilities. Using Office XP as a development platform, we can take advantage of the familiar Excel user interface to rapidly develop custom, value-added business intelligence solutions to enable our customers to better manage their business.”

— Rob O’Dell
Solution director
Knowledge Management Solutions
Alpha Technologies Inc., an Immedient Company

“We think Office XP will be an extremely popular product with our customers, and we look forward to offering Office XP with Dell computer systems. Microsoft is committed to providing its customers with excellent and compelling solutions, and we’re pleased to be working with them to offer best-in-class technology.”

— Bill Amelio
Senior vice president and co-general manager of corporate business
Dell Computer Corp.

“We anticipate great demand for Office XP at our stores due to the product’s breadth of new capabilities and experiences it offers customers.”

— John Lostroscio
Vice president and general merchandising manager
CompUSA Management Co.

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