Office 2007: Initial Thoughts
So I just got upgraded from Office 2003 to Office 2007 at work and I have some mixed feelings about the whole thing.
Outlook 2007: This is a slight improvement. More information is squeezed into the same space but clearly enough and somewhat usefully. Customization is as easy as with 2003.
Excel 2007: Fantastic. You can learn the ribbon in seconds and then you’re off to the races. Improved functionality and ease of access of tools (once you figure out where everything is) will save you tons of time. A big part of my job just got a lot easier – although continue reading to find out why I think other parts just became an enormous headache.
Word 2007: I suppose everything comes at a price and what they did to Word was just wrong. It’s a pain in the rectum to customize this beast. The ribbon works great for something like Excel when you have tons of features you need at your fingertips but soon as you see the new Word you just want to simplify the whole damn thing but it isn’t about to let you do that. No, this is post-iPod Microsoft when a pretty interface is more important than user control. Although I’m not sure that’s much worse than pre-iPod post-iMac Microsoft when so-called ‘user-friendliness’ was more important than user control. Why does it seem like Microsoft policy and philosophy is increasingly being driven by whatever Apple is doing? Let Apple be for the people who want pretty things without too much thinking and let Microsoft serve the masses happy with complete control and functionality at the cost of a little learning. The bastards just need to let me right-click and tell stuff to go the hell away and STAY away unless I expressly ask for it to return cause I’m the user goddamn it and you should bloody well listen to what I say not what your freaking marketing department tells you, you mindless sons of…
Okay, got a little carried away there. Microsoft will do that to you, especially if you remember a Windows OS that was built on DOS. You know, back in the good ol’ days when whatever else went wrong, at least you knew where to sucker-punch the thing. Like when the damn paperclip wouldn’t die so you found its image files and deleted the little bastard’s face. I still remember how good that felt.
Calibri: This is the new default font with this version of Office and while it does look very nice I find it sometimes difficult to see the spaces. The subtle difference between no space, one space, and two spaces can be hard to distinguish. Probably only bothers people with my particular brand of OCD.
So overall while I am absolutely in love with the new Excel and can see some slight new usefulness in the new Outlook, the serious issues with Word are keeping me from upgrading the home PC. Perhaps once Word 2007 and I get to know each other a little better (read: I find out where to punch it to make it do my bidding) then I’ll see about upgrading the desktop on the home front. I think the primary mistake Microsoft made here was assuming that what made sense for Excel must also make sense for Word but seriously, if that was the case they’d be the same damn program rather than separate applications. Microsoft understands that Outlook is different, why force Word to conform to an inconvenient standard while Outlook gets tailored to its specific needs?
