Bill Gates's introduction of the new Windows Vista operating system Monday - which included dancers clad in Microsoft colors - pulled out all the stops.
But it's the release of Microsoft Office 2007 that has Penn officials all abuzz.
The newest version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite went on sale yesterday and will require an overhaul of some of Wharton's Operations and Information Management curriculum, OPIM professor Thomas Lee said.
Lee teaches OPIM 101, the class in which most Wharton students are first introduced to Microsoft Excel as an analytical tool.
And since the new version of Excel is vastly different from previous editions, OPIM professors will have to redesign course materials before the school switches to the new program.
That upgrade will be completed over the summer, said Wharton Chief Information Officer Deirdre Woods.
"Will it change our curriculum materials? Absolutely," Lee said.
He added the Excel skills learned in OPIM are later used in "quantitative analysis" classes such as Accounting and Finance, not to mention at many of the major investment-banking firms where students often find employment.
"The transition is not going to be instant," Lee said, since students who don't upgrade to the new program over the summer may face compatibility issues come September.
Office 2007 is the product of a complete redesign of Microsoft Office - all the familiar menus and toolbars users have grown familiar with will be gone, replaced by a new feature called the Ribbon.
Office will also use XML file formats for the first time, meaning that documents created using the 2007 version cannot be opened with previous versions.
The underlying calculations that Excel can be used for will remain the same, however, Lee said.
"From our perspective, we think of it primarily as an interface change," he said.
For non-Wharton students, the biggest draw of Office 2007 will be new features, such as built-in citations, with which users can enter citation data and allow the program to automatically format the document.
The venerable old typeface Times New Roman is also on its way out as the default font, replaced by a brand-new font called Calibri.
For new users, Office 2007 will likely be easier to use than past versions: Related tasks are now placed together on a set of seven tabs across the top of the screen, and other functions reveal themselves when relevant parts of the document are selected.
But Wharton and Engineering sophomore Jonathan Coveney is still wary of Microsoft's new product.
"I know Penn is going to be on the forefront of adoption," he said, "but I don't know how useful it's going to be. Microsoft is kind of famous for hawking things as useful when they're really not that great."
