So what do you guys think of it? Worth switching from office XP? Any new features that turn out to be useful?
Are any of the features ever useful? I think they just add more variety of annoying paper clips with each update.
For the 90% of people that write an essay or letter and occasionally fire up Excel, its all a total waste of time.
Sos windows XP, sos a computer that runs anything faster than a 233.
We all know that functionality has very little to do with new hardware/software, it usually tends to be about getting the same things done at the same speed but with them looking prettier.
So has anyone actually used it?
ive got a Release version from my MSDN account on the lappy, its sh*t. Its very pretty, but my main machine runs Office 2k, and ive yet to find anything that doesnt do for me, or infact for anyone else that isnt using the high-end macros and writing VBA scripts, even then the functions can usually be added in.
I quite like it tbh - finally theyve bothered to significantly update the interface.
I wrote about 30k words worth through the final 6 months of my degree using 2k7 Word, and it made my life a lot easier.
Sure the interface will take some getting used to, but once you do the old one begins to feels so dated.
My mate loves it.
Slow if your a mouse user but has a shedload of keyboard shortcuts.
Loving the RSS feed integration in Outlook and the other features too :D
Menu was a bit of a bastard to get used to, but you adjust.
Were his general comments.
Quote from: funkychicken9000Sos windows XP, sos a computer that runs anything faster than a 233.
We all know that functionality has very little to do with new hardware/software, it usually tends to be about getting the same things done at the same speed but with them looking prettier.
Your first paragraph I disagree with, but I do agree on the second.
In general the OS and hardware have to be kept up to date to keep up with both technology and software demands as everything improves; updating is kind of necessary if you want to do more than the most mundane of tasks (which we all do). Its not an ideal analogy to what is essentially a fancy word processing and spreadsheet suite.
I want a pencil with frickin lazers.
:lol:
Quote from: funkychicken9000Sos windows XP, sos a computer that runs anything faster than a 233.
Rubbish.
I got it on beta played with it, some nice features but I just could not get to grips with it, the interface that is supposed to be easier to use for me was just worse, and it seemed even on the last builds rather slow and bulky.
Back on office xp now, much happier with that
mm, i installed it on my fresh format/install (earlier today)
and now I wish I hadnt, for the mount I use office, id rather stick with 2003 so Ill at least know where everything is....
maybe the new one is better, but its not really worth the time investment to find out...
saying that.... i havnt really used it yet, and im not going to bother uninstalling it anc changing back to 2k6 so watch this space ;)
If you read a lot of the Microsoft Docs on it, they are aware that there will be a hump for users familiar with the previous office interface, but for those who arent, the learning curve is supposedly much shorter.
Dunno how true that is, but its an interesting take.
Quote from: funkychicken9000Sos windows XP, sos a computer that runs anything faster than a 233.
For software there hasnt been much if any improvement, 99% is bells and whistles changes. 95%+ of people will gain no actual advantage changing up except for a lighter wallet.
Hardware is different, it allows you to do some things significantly faster and can allow you to do stuff you could not do with lesser hardware. If you dont use the speed you have though then its worthless.
Your question, perhaps, should be entirely based on will I gain any additional useful functionality from upgrading? In which case we dont know as we have no idea of what you will use it for ;)
Only thing that is useful in it is the in suite PDF creator. Doesnt seem to bad but in the beta its a tad flakey. Will get the full version in a week or two once testing is deemed good enough for network deployment.
Well, now that I have had chance to have a play.
Its confirmed everything Ive said about the software/hardware industries. It does more or less exactly what the old version does, but looks prettier and runs like a dog on an athy 3200+.
Oh look, time to get an upgrade so my word processor can look flashier :?
Quote from: funkychicken9000It does more or less exactly what the old version does, but looks prettier and runs like a dog on an athy 3200+.
Precisely why I dont buy any M$ software I can avoid. For 99% of people something like Open office is way OTT and its free too.
Why bother paying for M$? (providing you arent a company that wants to share in their latest proprietary formats of course (or you are challenged in the penis department and *have* to make up for it, somehow...)).
1. Paid support.
2. Widely accepted format.
3. A good product.
4. A product capable of more than other office suites.
5. A product that supports a damn good well known collaboration tool.
just a few points there.
1: Most wont need it, there are support forums for free software anyway.
2: So is PDF and RTF, the latter even more so. Anyway I mentioned this already
3: Depends on your hardware. In most cases its complete overkill
4: Again complete overkill for 99% of people
5: How many people need to collaborate?
You can hardly dispute that it is a good product, it has become the de facto standard for that reason - there are plenty of competitor products that have been around over time before the big Office boom.
The last time I used OO I found it fiddly, temperamental and unrewarding quite frankly. Simple tasks such as setting up margins were made awkward and didnt quite work as expected.
Is OO actually any less over-killy? In my experience of using it, admittedly at least a couple of versions ago, it was pretty clunky really.
Quote from: Clockd 0NeYou can hardly dispute that it is a good product, it has become the de facto standard for that reason - there are plenty of competitor products that have been around over time before the big Office boom.
The last time I used OO I found it fiddly, temperamental and unrewarding quite frankly. Simple tasks such as setting up margins were made awkward and didnt quite work as expected.
There are two issues. One is it any better than the latest version of other software available? Quite frankly it isnt providing you know what you are trying to do. In order to attempt to be more friendly there has been a load of excess dross thrown in and some items like the paperclip. You really like Clippy, do you? :twisted:
Second is that once they were put into the position of supplying the base operating system and the software then there was no other possibility, they had to become the defacto standard for office software. Only a complete and utter incompetent in charge could have resulted in anything less.
To be honest many of the other packages available were less easy to use but the rampant use of proprietary formats made it unlikely that they would survive. Some of the opposition was better than M$ but people were blinded by the compatibility issue to any such factors.
Earlier versions of M$ Office showed that they were equally bad, it wasnt until the enormous monetary advantage was pushed into usability that it improved much.
Quote from: BigSoyIs OO actually any less over-killy? In my experience of using it, admittedly at least a couple of versions ago, it was pretty clunky really.
About the same, they are both chasing the same markets. To be honest there isnt a wordprocessor that just does the basics you need any more.
No one wants that any more though Serious, with all the computing power available these days people want their word processor to act as a full-on desktop publishing suite for the money, anything less and you might as well use Wordpad.
Office/Word reached the saturation point of functionality a few years back I reckon, anything new is cosmetics as stated or gimmicky stuff.
Quote from: Clockd 0NeNo one wants that any more though Serious, with all the computing power available these days people want their word processor to act as a full-on desktop publishing suite for the money, anything less and you might as well use Wordpad.
Office/Word reached the saturation point of functionality a few years back I reckon, anything new is cosmetics as stated or gimmicky stuff.
The one that really did that effectively was Wordstar 2.0, and it did it better than M$. Still didnt help the situation though. I think we agree on the saturation point at least. There certainly is a gap between the two and probably programs trying to fill it but its difficult for them to get noticed.
OOo might be clunky as well, but Ive been using it since the Staroffice days of a decade ago, so Im used to it. The menus and toolbars are totally customizable anyway. Nice DTP features like frames and good wrapping + the drawing features like flowcharty type clip art and connector thingies make me happy.
If I was hooked to Exchange, Id just use Novell Evolution. ;)
Lets be clear though for a minute - the reason Office dominates the market is not your really your average joe-soap having a copy on his home machine, its the 10,000 seat corporate licences they sell by the bucket-load.
When Im using Office, Im not going to be using this mythical "everything you need is effectively notepad" style-word processor. Almost every document I write is going to have sections, styles, tables, complicated headers and footers, ToCs, embedded files, images, diagrams, and other kinds of crap, and in my experience Word is the most consistent tool out there for achieveing a repeatable style. Im not saying OO cant do it, it probably can these days, but to me it doesnt feel quite so slick as MS - maybe thats just familiarity though.
Either way, every company I deal with produces documents which have obviously had a fairly heavy flavouring of formatting applied, and if I recieved for example a design document these days that was just a piece of continuous prose, Id bounce it straight back out the door.
Except probably way more than 90% of the non-advertising stuff I get is basic letters that could very easily have been done with something a lot cheaper than M$ pile of waffle. All of that could be done very simply, not quite by Note pad but by something a lot simpler than office. Very few people use spreadsheets, they might use a database for names and addresses though. not really something that requires the might of the Office database.
Most of the crap can be done by my ancient copy of Wordstar 2 TBH so nothing new there at all. The one thing that needed was a decent spellchecker. Still have it installed even now.
Quote from: SeriousVery few people use spreadsheets.
Again, this is utter rubbish. Money makes the world go around, and Excel is surprisingly good at counting...
Quote from: BigSoyQuote from: SeriousVery few people use spreadsheets.
Again, this is utter rubbish. Money makes the world go around, and Excel is surprisingly good at counting...
i use excel a hell of a lot. budgeting, tabulating results for reports etc... very powerfull tool imo.
i prefer office because everything else is alien to me.
Indeed, Word wont open a CSV file (these are used everywhere), something, again, Excel is very good at doing.
I am runnin 2k3 but have 2k7 I can install if necessary
Quote from: BigSoyQuote from: SeriousVery few people use spreadsheets.
Again, this is utter rubbish. Money makes the world go around, and Excel is surprisingly good at counting...
Didnt say excell wasnt good at counting but it comes as part of the package, virtually everyone will use the word processor, fewer use the database and fewest use the spreadsheet. You would be shocked at how many users get the full suite when they only use the wordprocessor for a few letters. Im not just talking about Dixons/PCworld customers here, loads of big businesses buy the suite and roll it out on every desktop they have.
Usually there are better options for doing accountancy. Perhaps you should go and learn about business rather than pretending?
Quote from: redi use excel a hell of a lot. budgeting, tabulating results for reports etc... very powerfull tool imo.
Are you typical of users though? I doubt it.
Quotei prefer office because everything else is alien to me.
Exctly what I have been trying to point out, once they have you then you aent going anywhere else.
Quote from: SeriousQuote from: BigSoyQuote from: SeriousVery few people use spreadsheets.
Again, this is utter rubbish. Money makes the world go around, and Excel is surprisingly good at counting...
Didnt say excell wasnt good at counting but it comes as part of the package, virtually everyone will use the word processor, fewer use the database and fewest use the spreadsheet. You would be shocked at how many users get the full suite when they only use the wordprocessor for a few letters. Im not just talking about Dixons/PCworld customers here, loads of big businesses buy the suite and roll it out on every desktop they have.
Usually there are better options for doing accountancy. Perhaps you should go and learn about business rather than pretending?
Quote from: redi use excel a hell of a lot. budgeting, tabulating results for reports etc... very powerfull tool imo.
Are you typical of users though? I doubt it.
Quotei prefer office because everything else is alien to me.
Exctly what I have been trying to point out, once they have you then you aent going anywhere else.
Who mentioned accountancy? I said money, which isnt necessarily the same thing. I deal with prices, bills, hours, plus a load of other stuff that gets counted.
The point is I am a quite typical user, I work on a site with 150 people from my company they almost all use Excel in their day-to-day jobs, similiarly for the previous site, with closer to 3,000 people, and similarly for the company as a whole, closer to 10,000 people. And were hardly a super-specialised company.
If you want to get personal why dont YOU find out what working in a modern office is like, seems you manage to type well enough on the forums, considering as far as I know you off on long-term sick? :evil:
EDIT: Id also love to know where you got your stat that more people use Access than Excel from, cos Id guess its big fluffy place in the sky called clouds.
Also Serious, your making a huge assumption that the typical office user will not use any of the features.
Whos to say that you are representative of the typical MS office user?
If you bought Microsoft Office just for a spellchecker your more of a chump than you let on. Ever heard of ispell? aspell? or heck just go with abiword, right in whatever damn format you want and its comes with aspell support.
If all people needed was a word processor then thats all theyd buy (you can buy the office applications as seperates you know!).
Personally I like outlook for emails and calendaring, I like excel for tabulating and calculating a bunch of things on a whim, and I like word to deal with word processing, then there is publisher to produce posters and quick DTP style stuff, and powerpoint.
Oh and OneNote too.
Quote from: BigSoyAlmost every document I write is going to have sections, styles, tables, complicated headers and footers, ToCs, embedded files, images, diagrams, and other kinds of crap
me too, thats the primary reason why I stopped using Word. Maybe it can be convinced to do all those things consistently and without messing up every half hour, but I dont have time to learn how.
Latex plus the Lyx frontend does it all, fully automatic numbering of everything that actually works, its free, it runs under Linux or Windows, outputs PDF or PS if you ask it to and best of all, not a paperclip in sight.
At best Word is as good as Lyx, and thats with the rather large assumption that Word is actually going to do what you tell it to on a given day. I dont see why I should pay good money for something which is "as good" when I can have all the functionality I could ever want for free.
Excel is the only M$ program I would consider paying for, and the OO spreadsheet has now advanced to the level where it does everything I want at home. In an office environment it would probably be different, but for me the improvement isnt even worth the shame of buying it, let alone the price tag.
Heh, Lyx is a fine alternative for all of those things - unforunately as a relatively small open-source project as far as Im aware, its unlikely to replace the supportability of MS in the office environment.
If I really want consistency, I might just use straight laTex, but then eventually the consistency usually drives me up the wall when I want to tweak!
Quote from: BigSoyHeh, Lyx is a fine alternative for all of those things - unforunately as a relatively small open-source project as far as Im aware, its unlikely to replace the supportability of MS in the office environment.
quite true, and a right pain in my behind because I hate being forced to use Word at work
QuoteIf I really want consistency, I might just use straight laTex, but then eventually the consistency usually drives me up the wall when I want to tweak!
lol yeah I suppose that can be an issue at times.
A lot of scientific journals still require submissions in Latex so Ill probably have to learn how to do it by hand at some point. Word isnt the standard quite everywhere.
Quote from: M3ta7h3adAlso Serious, your making a huge assumption that the typical office user will not use any of the features.
Whos to say that you are representative of the typical MS office user?
If you had read everything I have said then it would be obvious that Im not, I dont produce hundreds of relatively simple letters every day, but then again neither is anyone else on here. People just tend to assume because they use something everyone else will, which just isnt the case.
QuoteIf you bought Microsoft Office just for a spellchecker your more of a chump than you let on. Ever heard of ispell? aspell? or heck just go with abiword, right in whatever damn format you want and its comes with aspell support.
I got a copy of Word with Works free when I bought my lappy. I have used the full suite when working though that was a good few years ago. Working practice hasnt changed at all though, I like to keep up on those issues.
Big companies buy corporate licences whereby they can use Office everywhere, the price difference isnt great when you think of the wages bill. On the other hand if someone was caught with Office on a PC that was only issued with word then there would be hell to pay.
Some of the people on here have run into extremely zealous control systems that even remove things they have got licences for.
[darlek] non standard software, exterminate! exterminate! [/darlek]
Quote from: SeriousQuote from: M3ta7h3adAlso Serious, your making a huge assumption that the typical office user will not use any of the features.
Whos to say that you are representative of the typical MS office user?
If you had read everything I have said then it would be obvious that Im not, but then again neither is anyone else on here. People just tend to assume because they use something everyone else will which just isnt the case.
[/quote]
How do you know whether anyone here is a typical user or not? You make it sound as if the typical user has two heads and 3 foot pan-handle growing out of their face.
Typical or not, I dont assume anything about what the people I work with use their office suite for, because I know the documentation standards we have to adhere to, on a global basis, require at a bare minimum Word and Excel. Im also pretty convinced that most big companies have similar requirements, and therefore will use the tools in the same way
For me it comes down to what I use at work as its too much hassle using 2 different versions/packages.
If work deploy 07 then I will upgrade at home from 03 to 07 regardless of whether its better or worse. It just makes life easier.
Quote from: BigSoyYou make it sound as if the typical user has two heads and 3 foot pan-handle growing out of their face.
you mean you havent?
Damn, alone again :(
Quote from: MongooseQuote from: BigSoyYou make it sound as if the typical user has two heads and 3 foot pan-handle growing out of their face.
you mean you havent?
Damn, alone again :(
3-and-a-tulip for me 8)
/me puts down the crackpipe.
Quote from: SeriousMost of the crap can be done by my ancient copy of Wordstar 2 TBH so nothing new there at all.
Maybe all the documents you produce are basic enough to pass for Wordstar 2 products, however what BigSoy said is going to be true of even school children:
Quote from: BigSoyAlmost every document I write is going to have sections, styles, tables, complicated headers and footers, ToCs, embedded files, images, diagrams, and other kinds of crap
and in conclusion....
Quote from: M3ta7h3adIf you bought Microsoft Office just for a spellchecker your more of a chump than you let on.
It isnt often I actaully laugh out loud when I lol (so to speak) however in this particular instance its a real LOL !
Quote from: DeltaZeroQuote from: SeriousMost of the crap can be done by my ancient copy of Wordstar 2 TBH so nothing new there at all.
Maybe all the documents you produce are basic enough to pass for Wordstar 2 products, however what BigSoy said is going to be true of even school children:
Quote from: BigSoyAlmost every document I write is going to have sections, styles, tables, complicated headers and footers, ToCs, embedded files, images, diagrams, and other kinds of crap
and in conclusion....
Quote from: M3ta7h3adIf you bought Microsoft Office just for a spellchecker your more of a chump than you let on.
It isnt often I actaully laugh out loud when I lol (so to speak) however in this particular instance its a real LOL !
*still * all handled by Wordstar , Mr zero
Slightly off-topic, but is the orignal point Is Office 2007 worth it?
If so, I havent seen such a heated debate on here for a while, keep it up chaps! :mrgreen:
Quote from: White GiantSlightly off-topic, but is the orignal point Is Office 2007 worth it?
#1 If its for business, your boss will pay for it.
#2 How many home users actually pay for office? :lol:
So the better question is, "is it worth the download?" :P
the annoying thing is, serious mentioned a home user using an access database for storing something.
No home user will have bought a copy of office that contains access, it is only the professional that has it.
The big thing that needs to be addressed is compatibility with other places you use. Almost anyone working for a company will be dealing with ms office, it is just standard, it maybe shouldnt be but it is, now if you try and take a word document and put it into another one of the free alternatives you will get some funny things happening, formatting, anything embedded, they all go a bit pear shaped.
Sure if you save it as an rtf file then it would be fine, but you lose the whole point of using a decent word processor and all the formatting, not to mention you might as well be using wordpad.
I have worked for a company that had to pass data between itself and other companies, and you cant use pdf all the time, acrobat just aint practical for day to day use. If you want decently formatted stuff that you know will be compatible with anothers systems you use office. Simple as
Ugh. Here we go again, "acrobat just isnt practical for day do day use." Um, yeah it is. Its great, its consistent, and its simple. If you think its slow, get Foxit. Been that way for years and years. That PDF is some sort of PITA is a tired old meme. If youre collaborating on something, certainly have compatible software if you need to edit--and also the same fonts, etc. But if you want somebody to view a document as you see on your screen, PDF is the only real solution.
it is great if you want someone to see it, not so great if you need someone to edit it.
it is a great archival and reading document tool
not so great as a quick and easy pass around tool
plus the fact that noone knows how to use acrobat so every single person would have to be taught, and dont say it is so easy anyone can use it, go meet some of the people who work in offices.
people have grown up with office and know how it works, for the majority you cant train them to do the same in another program easily
Quote from: BigSoyEDIT: Id also love to know where you got your stat that more people use Access than Excel from, cos Id guess its big fluffy place in the sky called clouds.
Quote from: Sweensterthe annoying thing is, serious mentioned a home user using an access database for storing something.
No home user will have bought a copy of office that contains access, it is only the professional that has it.
OK, they have cut Access from the home releases, making it even worse value for money than I first thought. Guess I should keep a better eye on their worthless sh*te.
Everyone elses still includes one and so does my copy of works 8
TBH the only thing I use a database for is storing peoples addresses.
roflmao. Then your woefully nieve to the power of a true database.
For contact information I use Outlooks own contacts manager. Includes home addresses, business addresses, as many phone numbers as I have for a person, along with notes and so on.
If your a user of thunderbird then that too has a contacts manager inside of it.
Using access or similar just to store peoples addresses is a wee bit like cracking a nut with fat man.
The reason they cut access out of home editions is because people dont need that functionality! people dont use it, and access is a bloody powerful DBMS, and so costs quite a bit.
I know about outlook, I have used the thing while working but basically I dont have enough addresses, or anything else, to bother changing over my home address book. There already is an address book built into windows that does the bsics TBH.