Review: OFF 2K-7
So, my take: 'ehhh.'
Maybe I'm a stick in the mud but why the heck do they want to change the basic interface when hundred's of millions of people have gotten pretty darn good at it? Maybe it would have been OK 10 years ago when they were fighting Lotus and Word Perfect for top-dog status and maybe it's OK if your a middle aged 'boomer who's never heard of a DOC or a spreadsheet...but how many of them are left out there? Most everyone has some level of familiarity with the Office suite in particular and Windows-standard interface in general.
I guess it just puzzles me that you have a pretty good product and instead of fixing the things that need fixing (like MEMORY HOGGING---BLOAT---CRASHING) you 'mess' with the stuff that doesn't need to be 'messed' with (yes, you can substitute the 'other' word for 'mess'). Case in point: I dare you, the first time you open a doc or spreadsheet in OFF 2K-7 to save it in another format (say plain text) and not spend at least 5 or 10 minutes trying to figure out how the hell to do it. Also, if you're going to be sharing your stuff with anyone else be aware that the default file format for Word and Excel aren't compatable with older versions...that same 5-10 minutes to figure out how the first time. All applications do a good job of reading older versions, though.
PowerPoint seems to be the most improved and Outlook seems to have the least 'messed' with interface. Haven't touched Publisher yet. A positive: the applications seem to open and respond much quicker than any of the old versions do so performance seems to be improved (although occasionally when I close one I get some strange 'application error' box pop up). I'm sure as time goes by and especially when & if we make the switch at work I'll get more used to it and eventually fall in love and try to figure out how I ever got along without it but until then it's going to be a pain.
Makes me really think twice about upgrading to Vista. I still have the free upgrade that came with the new PC we got last Christmas but I have been waiting for SP-1 to release before installing it. If Vista is going to be as big of an interface change as OFF 2K-7 I'm not sure I want to put my Beautiful Wife through that...read between THOSE lines.
Labels: Tech
posted by Beast1624 at 2:27 PM
2 Comments:
I had to revert back to office 2K3 because of some compliance issues with some of my other software.
I don't miss that ribbon
I think they might have realized that people were getting frustrated shelling out hundreds of dollars for pretty much the same program. 2003 is very close to XP, and XP is very close to 2000. I've heard from people that use things like Excel and Word all day that the "ribbon" is actually pretty useful, and that after several hours (or days) of learning the new interface, they did a pretty good job with making available what is typically needed. If you need to do something not considered "typical," however, you have to resort to digging.
With that said, I don't plan on getting it any time soon, lol. If it's any help, Vista is much more like Windows XP than Office 2007 is like 2003. But again, I don't plan on spending money to upgrade to it when there are enough things in it that make me think "why the heck did they change that?" and XP works fine for me.
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