Bye Bye Microsoft Office 2000

It’s time for us to salute to Microsoft Office 2000. On July 14, Microsoft will stop supporting the office suite in terms of patches and security updates. Office 2000 has been supported for the past ten years since its release on June 1999.

If a few hackers or exploiters out there are planning to find more vulnerabilities (which I wouldn’t doubt) in the old and outdated Office 2000 suite, Microsoft won’t release any patches or security fixes. In fact, more than a dozen “critical” loop holes were found in the Office 2000 suite this year alone. To add on, ten bugs were addressed last week for Microsoft Powerpoint 2000.

Moreover, the Office Update site that was launched with Office 2000 back in 1999 will also be shutting its doors in order to make way for the current update site, Microsoft Update, and update utilities Microsoft is using for their products.

Microsoft will also stop supporting the Office Inventory Tool which gives administrators the ability to check Office 2000, XP and 2003 versions if their suites are patched to the latest updates. Microsoft is pushing administrators to use the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) when dealing with network updates.

Personally, it’s time for those who are using Microsoft Office 2000 to start upgrading their software and move on to the latest office suite as it not only provides new features, however, it increases productivity and efficiency. Moreover, I bet a high percentage of those still using the Office 2000 suite are still stuck on a lower-end machine – A Pentium III or Pentium IV? It’s time to upgrade folks! It doesn’t cost much to upgrade a computer system. And one can always opt to purchase or download a pirated copy of the latest Office suite. Or you can try using the technical preview of Office 2010 for free.

So, I salute to you again Office 2000. You have served your purpose. You did help me back then. Thanks for bearing such productive offspring, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 and now Office 2010. You’ll still reign in the Office suite world!