Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows: Microsoft Office 2007 Review
I can’t recall ever being this genuinely excited about a Microsoft Office release. Office 2007 is one of those rare software releases that just nails it. This is the type of claim one typically hears about fun consumer electronics products from Apple Computer, not supposedly tired productivity applications from Microsoft. But Office 2007 is a home run, an absolutely stellar suite of tools that will benefit users of all types. Trust me on this one: Unless you have absolutely no need to be more productive, you want Office 2007. And thanks to a larger-than-ever portfolio of Office suites at a variety of price points, you almost have no excuse for not jumping on the bandwagon. This is productivity squared.
I am a medium/advanced user of Office since the mid 90s.
Office 2007 has been a real time-waster. After approximately 3 months as a user I am adjusting to the interface with all the cutesy icons taking up screen space and not offering any cognitive advantage over simple words, as in the old menus. I really don’t have a choice here at the office, but I will not install it at home, and I will WARN people not to invest in this gimmicky upgrade, because productivity will drop and frustration will rise!
Examples:
1. In Word, what is this “font improvement” when the characters “RN” in lower case (rn) look like an “m” (lowercase m) in Times New Roman? I thought had mistyped a persons name until I fooled around with this for several minutes. Try it for yourself!
2. Excel
Today’s last straw was having to spend hours trying to make a simple x-y plot in Excel, with VALUES on the horizontal axis. This was easy in earlier versions. Now, after searching the web for help, I have concluded that it is a major “hack” to do this.
Conclusion:
The most striking thing (and I believe various blogs and reviews written by experienced Office users reflect this) is the incredible re-learning curve required to do things that we already knew how to do in past versions (which, of course, involved learning to deal with minor changes). If you unleash this beast in your business, be prepared for a s..l..o…..w……down in productivity and a drop in morale!