Having read Jensen’s blog about Microsoft Office 2007 over the last months I’ve been itching to give it a try and see what’s new. At long last Beta 2 is available and I installed it this morning:
First of all I should probably mention that I’m not a big user of MS Office. In fact I only really use Outlook and Word for emailing and rarely launch Excel, Access, Visio and all the rest. Apart from emailing I look at documents and spreadsheets I’m sent, but tend not to actually write them (I’m a web kind of a guy, I prefer HTML to .DOC).
That out of the way, I must say I’m really impressed. Within seconds you can create some really cool, professional looking graphics and suddenly I feel like I want to create a PowerPoint presentation with it to really impress the boss! However, the user interface really is completely different. Those who felt comfortable with the myriad toolbars and buttons will feel completely lost for a while trying to figure out where everything is. This is both good and bad.
It’s good because everything is very sensibly located. You’re never far from where you want to be and commands are logically organised so if you don’t know where something is you’ll be able to find it within a couple of mouse clicks. This brings me onto the bad, which is that until you get used to it, you have to think. Once you’ve mastered using a piece of software you can forget about it and turn all your attention to what you’re actually trying to do (like writing a motivational email or a resignation letter). With Office 2007 you’re going to spend a lot of time initially trying to work out where the hell everything is, meaning you spend less time thinking about what you’re trying to achieve. This will bug a lot of people.
For me it’s great. As a non-heavy Office user I don’t know how to do anything anyway so with a little bit of exploring I’ve come across all kinds of cool things and straight away I look like an Office pro! There are loads of other cool things (live preview being one I like straight away) but it’s early days so I don’t know what’ll turn out to be useful or not yet. I’ll keep you posted…
Something that I’ve seen asked but never mentioned – what happens to the title bar if you’ve got a really long document name? Does it shorten it like the Windows Taskbar does?
I just wondered as the Quick Access Toolbar takes up a lot of space on the left of the title bar and the title is centred now (breaking the Windows’ guidelines).
Sorry, should be never answered instead of mentioned…!
It just cuts off the name and shows it like: “This is a very long titled document…”. You can move the quick access toolbar to below the ribbon and add / remove buttons from it but to be honest it doesn’t feel like it takes up much room.
I’ve not seen it yet but if it has (even nearly) the same hardware requirements as Vista, I will scream. Bloatware.
I am currently wearing my red fedora. Don’t know whether this will work or not, but…
I’ve tried Vista and to say that it’s dog slow is an insult to slow dogs – it’s completely unusable on the machine I tested it on (and that was no slouch)! However, Office 2007 doesn’t appear any slower than Office 2003.
And I’ve inherited an old PC that I’m considering putting some flavour of Linux on – trouble is there are so many choices that I don’t even know where to start!
And nice hat! 🙂
Fedora man, Fedora! Although I am informed that Ubuntu is okay too. Just don’t go anywhere near whatever the old Caldera stuff is nowadays.
Cheers, I’ll check it out!
What do you want to mess about with Linux for? I keep telling you John, get a Mac!
Ha ha, and I keep telling you John – buy me a Mac and I’ll happily use it!
It turns out that the new MacBooks are actually cheaper than the equivalent spec laptop PC, see http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000591.html
So get it on your wedding present list! 😉