Why "Upgrade" To Office 2007 598
walterbyrd writes "IMO: Office-2007 is a contender for the least useful upgrade in the history of computing. It's expensive, has a steep learning curve, and it's default format is even less compatible with anything else. Stan Beer discusses the "upgrade" in his article: Question: why do I need to upgrade to Office 2007?."
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
b) Because muppets keep sending you files in a new, super incompatible format that you can't open otherwise
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA1016
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people I know who use microsoft office and other microsoft products use them exclusively. I've made some inroads into converting people towards open source, but it's often too much work.
I had to change away from using openoffice and Latex for my documents during my phd because my supervisor insisted everything must be in microsoft formats, as did the department I was in. That was everything from papers to lecture materials. As this was a computer science dept I was somewhat amazed. I was at one point the *only* person there actively encouraging use of open source tools.
This wasn't a place I was happy be to be at, hence why I am no longer there.
well... if you're gonna switch, why not (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:well... if you're gonna switch, why not (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of applications needed by the business, we could pretty much switch 90 per cent of our staff tommorrow. The reason I would never suggest this is that it would not be cost effective. The whole IT infrastructure of the company is set up around supporting Windows. Switching over is not just case of burnig a few Ubuntu ISOs and showing some managers how to use Evolution. We would have to extensivly retrain our IT staff, find a hardware vendor who supported Linux (which might well be somewhat more expensive), and that's before we even begin to get into the day to day hassle of dealing with all the little problems it would throw up.
Case in point, I was setting up a laptop with a GPRS card on one of our salesmens laptop last week, and it wasn't working. After coming to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong at this end, I called the service providers support line. The friendly phone drone on the other end ran through a series of troubleshooting steps over the phone before coming to the same conclusion I had, and then discovering that the reason it wasn't working was because they had not turned the account on.
Now, suppose that was a linux laptop. For arguments sake, lets assume the card actually runs under Linux. Here is how the conversation might well have panned out:
Phone Drone: Click on the start menu...
Me: This machine is running Linux.
PD: Ah, right, I just need to put you hold for a second.
(Hold music)
PD: Sorry, we don't support Linux, you'll need to install this on a windows PC.
Yes, I expect that with much wrangling and arguing I could still make him go and check things their end, but we make calls like this every day. We would have to go through that every time. And no, we would not just be able to choose service providers who support Linux. In the example cited above, we have a choice of four networks for GPRs cards. To my knowledge, none of them support Linux.
There is no doubt that moving to OO.o would remove "an important part of the need to keep the Windows platform ". Unfortunatly, there are dozens more very good reasons why companies keep the Windows platform.
Re:well... if you're gonna switch, why not (Score:5, Insightful)
If switching does save $500, that money can obviously be used elsewhere, but OOo is going to have to be very good to convince people that are satisfied with MS Office to switch. I am not going to speculate about how many people are actually satisfied with office.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you depend of excel macros (a really great feature) you're completely out of luck. And there isn't a good OO equivalent to PPT...once you've bought PPT, the whole suite isn't much more.
OO is find for internal use or writing a letter to mon, but no
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It's called Impress, although personally, I feel both programs are over-used.
as in ? (Score:4, Insightful)
FTA: While I have the utmost respect for Mr Mossberg, I can't help but feel that the words in the second paragraph contradict and negate the words of the first. To my mind, a logical layout of commands and functions would obviate the need to learn how to find those commands and functions.
While I have the utmost respect for Mr. Beer, I can't help but feel that he has laid out an impossibly high standard for software menus. Is it even possible to, as he puts it, "obviate the need to learn how to find those commands and functions?"
Take what I said with a grain of salt, I'm bitter 'cause wish I had a kewl last name like his. Cue the "free-as-in-beer jokes." In 3, 2, 1...
Re:as in ? (Score:4, Interesting)
First, because he means the curve is shallow, not steep. A steep learning curve means something is easy to learn. If you doubt me, feel free to plot a "material learned/time" graph on the back of an envelope.
More seriously, what he means is that the interface is difficult to use. I've been using Office 2003 for 3 years, and every permutation before that, and I am still cursing the interface as buggy and counterintuitive. I hate contextual menus -- they mean I always have to check to see if the option I want is there, and it usually isn't. Microsoft ripped off that ill-advised Macintosh idea of making the computer "Smarter than the User", and the result is offensive.
Take one example: Every time I encounter an installation of Word that I have to use, the first thing I do is disable everything automatic that I can. But, of course, since I collaborate with folks in several languages, including ones that Word doesn't recognize, inevitably Word will still decide I'm writing in a language I have no intention to write in (e.g., Document was originally created in Austrian German, so every time I insert a footnote, it's in Austrian German). Now it runs automatic language support for that, including all that autoformatting crap that sucks even if I were writing in that language. Better yet, they enable the autoformatting, but require a consultation of a regional install disk to actually control it. So there's no bloody way to turn it off.
Will Office 2007 be better? I don't know, but complaining about the interface being hard to learn doesn't make any sense? Office's interface has never been intuitive or useful -- well, at least since Word 5.1 for the Macintosh (and for the record, I've never liked Apple either).
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Re:as in ? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Steep as in "hill," and "curve" as in "WTF are you mixing your metaphors for"?
C//
This story is dumb! (Score:5, Insightful)
These arguments are EXACTLY the arguments used with every major innovation in the past.
DOS vs Windows anyone?
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Re:This story is dumb! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're absolutely right. WP for DOS let you do all of those things, but let you keep control of them, and made it easy to produce coherent documents, with logical mark-up, in a user interface that didn't fight you every step of the way. (I was actually do most of my word-processing work in WP for VMS at the time, which was equally versatile.)
Word encourages you to apply effects willy-nilly, while at the same time making it really hard to apply styles properly, or see exactly what tags are applied to what elements, and in which order. (Does changing *this* change the definition of a style? Create a new style? Reformat this particular element in the style with custom local changes? Most of the time, it's anyone's guess.)
What you end up with is a document that can possibly be tweaked to look flashy, but probably unprofessional, by one person, on one PC / printer combination, for a given revision. Make changes, make changes on another machine, or (heaven forbid) let someone else make changes, and what you'll end up with is a document that quickly descends into a mess of semi-random style, formatting, language, spell-checking and other tags, with little to no hope of regaining any logical structure.
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I'd have to agree. There's plenty people could do, just using Notepad or Wordpad and some proper tab spacing (heck, sometimes, it would make it easier than dealing with Words formating bugs).
That being said, I hear the new 2007 interface is much better designed for professional layout and design. I'd be interested in trying it, but I've believed for a long time that MS products are superiorly over priced, particularly for what you get. I don't deal with publishing (at least
Masochism (Score:2, Funny)
I want my 1 minute back (Score:2, Insightful)
Meanwhile, Office 2007 would probably be mandatory for new functionality in new products from Microsoft - just as Office 2003 is mandatory for some functionality (edit in dataview) for Sharepoint Server 2003
Speaking of menus... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever menus look like, they need to be consistent. Menus that change every time you look at them suck.
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From the article (Score:2, Insightful)
A better question would be 'whether some of the time taken to master Office 2007 would be better used to gain a knowledge of OpenOffice, reducing our need to jump every t
I Maintain That I Don't NEED It (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft isn't holding a gun to your head. You don't have a need for a ribbon. You may find out later that it increases your productivity and then you may learn that it provides a better solution for your problems. But if you're accomplishing your job and tasks with older copies of Office, why do you need 2007? The fact is you probably don't. I myself am quite successful with OpenOffice.org but I don't use the spreadsheet much if at all.
Hell, as long as Microsoft keeps supporting the copy of Office you use, who cares about 2007? Let the early adopters play around with it and work the bugs out. I'll use the ribbon when everyone else is--no reason for me to learn another "J++" Microsoft product only to have that skill be completely useless. Office 2007 will probably be the de facto standard but why pay the price and risk of an early adopter?
We're all intelligent people here (I think), and we're all capable of weighing the pros and cons of software. Office 2007 should be no different. If you want to present a good article to me on 2007, I'd like to see all sides of the issue, not just telling me why I need to use it.
Re:I Maintain That I Don't NEED It (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can see some extension that people will want you can capitalize on it, if people will need to be trained you can train them, if it really is a useful innovation you can take advantage of it immediately.
However as you said it is a risk, as is any potentially worthwhile investment, and you have to decide for yourself whether it's worth it.
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Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:2, Insightful)
The banner might be more attractive to true first-time users, but will pose a whole new learning hurdle for rare users and much more for users with simple requirements (80+% of all users). The tasks have moved and now are much less obvious.
MS has shot themselves in the foot again.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you initially have to take time to figure out where things are, but when you know it's quicker.
I might like to mention something else about all this bitching about "users having to learn a new interface" for Office 2007: Can I not use that same argument for not switching to Linux?
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:5, Funny)
You could, but dude, your karma would take a beating around here.
TCO (Score:3, Insightful)
This is in fact the major argument against upgrading to GNU/Linux. Retraining put the TCO above the already known Microsoft software.
The fun thing is that same the argument doesn't apply when switching to a different version of the Microsoft software, even if the UI change is larger.
Re:Shooting themselves in the foot (Score:5, Insightful)
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All GUIs are fundmentally menuing systems. Limitied choice. You can only run whatever has been configured. If you can find it. My $PATH has 2823 possibilities. A very crowded menu system might have 100. Forcing additional layers and complexity. Text meuing systems have the same disadvantage.
GUIs are bloated bugfests. Poor use of hardware. A small example -- I view text
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Detestable? Detestable? You honestly believe that GUIs are (and I quote from Dictionary.com) "deserving to be detested; abominable; hateful"?
In God's name why!? What the hell are your reasons?
The only even half-sensible reason I can come up with for your belief is that GUIs are detestable because they allow those human vermin known as "normal people" use computers as well as any of us Unix nerds, and we simply can't have them mucking around in
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Such as? Or are you just an elitist who wants the world to devolve to the 1970s so that you can feel special because you can use that darn computin' machine.
Graphically Heavy (Score:2, Interesting)
Problems exist mostly for existing 'power' users (Score:5, Interesting)
For those users, the ribbon may be a great help in unlocking the use of the tool.
Of course, the real question is will the PHBs in major corporations see it that way? If they don't adopt Office 2007 in droves, it will die. If they do, then due to file format differences, everyone will be forced to upgrade and this becomes an entirely moot point. *sigh* Which is too bad for those of are using OpenOffice.org and other competing open source products.
As an employer? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm still irritated that the college I work at jumps on every little thing from Microsoft, but still doesn't cover anything recent from the UNIX or Mac worlds.
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More rows in excel (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More rows in excel (Score:5, Informative)
The total number of available columns in Excel
Old Limit: 256 (28)
New Limit: 16k (214)
The total number of available rows in Excel
Old Limit: 64k (216)
New Limit: 1M (220)
Total amount of PC memory that Excel can use
Old Limit: 1GB
New Limit: Maximum allowed by Windows
Number of unique colours allowed a single workbook
Old Limit: 56 (indexed colour)
New Limit: 4.3 billion (32-bit colour)
Number of conditional format conditions on a cell
Old Limit: 3 conditions
New Limit: Limited by available memory
Number of levels of sorting on a range or table
Old Limit: 3
New Limit: 64
Number of rows allowed in a Pivot Table
Old Limit: 64k
New Limit: 1M
Number of columns allowed in a Pivot Table
Old Limit: 255
New Limit: 16k
Maximum number of unique items within a single Pivot Field
Old Limit: 32k
New Limit: 1M
I will probably install Excel 2007 but nothing else. The conditional formatting alone should be worth it. Once you really understand it, you can quickly do some very useful things.
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I'm a former DBA, and one of my favorite activities was getting a dataset out of SQL with "some" processing done on it, and then pasting it right from isqlw (or now, sqlwb) into excel and doing more ad-hoc sorting and aggregate functions on it. You could usually do these things in SQL, but the indexes or partial computation was such that it might have been a 10-60 second query for each ad-hoc scenario you wanted
Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
It supports saving/loading backwards compatible formats too...
It also had a surprisingly low learning curve for me, despite the vastly more accessible UI it seems to have than 2003 with its menu jungles.
I'd argue the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that MS is slagged of for not changing Office much over the years, then why they finally do innovate, and change it to improve productivity and usefulness people slag it off with "Booohooo it has a steep learning curve". Honestly, Microsoft may do a lot of things wrong, but they do also do something right (i.e. the XBox 360, Visual Studio etc.), I honestly think Office 2007 is one of those things they've done right.
Re:I'd argue the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'd argue the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
But since I work at Microsoft, I *would* think that, wouldn't I? So here's a concrete example. I think this rocks. You can make up your own mind.
I often build PowerPoint slide decks (I will refrain from making excuses for this; I have my reasons). I rough out a group of slides, then tweak them until they look good. In PowerPoint 2003, the way that worked was I would save the slides, then apply different styles until I found one I liked. On a large slide deck, each of these changes might take a minute or more.
In PowerPoint 2007, styles are visually applied when you hover. This is great, because it only applies to the slides you can see, which is a lot faster. So instead of applying two dozen different styles at a minute or more each, I hover over the style I'm considering and see whether it looks good. Once I see one I like, I click and apply it. The time drops massively from a 45 minute exercise to a 90 second experiment.
It doesn't take a lot of little things like this to start adding up. Office 2007 is full of them. Everything I do in Office is easier and faster and more intuitive. If you work with Office frequently, it's fantastic. If you use Office for an hour a month, and you don't really do much with it... well, you're probably not going to get anything really noticeable out of the upgrade.
Short canned answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Good question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew someone who worked in a medical billing office who had a good reason to upgrade from Word 95 to Word 97. Here is why:
Once per week, she had to download a file from a bank, load it into MS Word, select one number on a line at the bottom of the file, copy, and then paste it into a field in a database application. The file really just contained plain text information.
But despite being text, despite only really containing a single number that the user wanted, the file was in Word 97 format.
When she
Here's a reason why you don't... Cleartype! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's really no different than the previous upgrade (Score:2, Insightful)
But Microsoft never fails to make the new Office write files, b
Re:It's really no different than the previous upgr (Score:3, Interesting)
here that lets you read new office 2007 files in older versions.
Re:It's really no different than the previous upgr (Score:4, Informative)
Also see Word Viewer 2003 [microsoft.com], Excel Viewer 2003 [microsoft.com], Visio 2002 Viewer [microsoft.com], Word 97/2000 Converter for Word 6 [microsoft.com], etc [microsoft.com].
Disclaimer: This is not an endorsement of closed formats; rather, an alternative for staying software version/vendor-independent.
Why Change? (Score:2)
So you have... (Score:2)
Kick me, I'm stupid..... (Score:4, Interesting)
What about a serious investigation of whether or not the new features will help his organization?
How about a review of their current users, features used/wanted, to find out whether an upgrade would be cost effective and return something for the investment?
Why does every new MS Office release inspire a new round of articles from dopes wanting someone else to tell them what would be good for their business, without much effort on their own behalf?
Anytime I hear or read someone asking whether they should upgrade to the latest version of ANYTHING, I just want to choke them.
By the time a new product comes out, there has been MORE than enough time for due dillegance, and the answer should be apparent before release candidates are distributed, unless of course, you are an idiot, and your company sucks.
When a owner of smooth running Windows shop with dozens of .NET applications and centralized SharePoint askes me about switching to Linux to 'save a few bucks', I immediately do a quick cost/benefit analysis on whether or not I should just beat his ass and change professions.
I will upgrade for ONE reason (Score:2, Informative)
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I cringe whenever I hear some spreadsheet jockey bragging about the size of his spreadsheet... you know it is just chock full of crap data and calculation errors.
It's a shame that you've spent 15 years stuck on spreadsheets. Spend some time to learn a database.
Because it is much better for technical documents? (Score:3, Interesting)
And the new equation editor simply rocks. It combines the best of TeX, Classic Equation Editor and OpenOffice Writer's equivalent. You can write some TeX code, press the Space key and Word automatically converts it to a WYSIWYG formula, which behaves pretty much like the equations in the Classic version.
Caring Intervention Needed? (Score:2)
Just as the recently rescued kidnapped boys didn't walk or ride away when they apparently had chances for freedom, similar mental lock-in may very well apply in this case.
Pay attention to even those you know only casually.
You could be the one to spot their captivity and take them to freedom.
Ongrade Subscriptions Instead (Score:2)
MS could still package "milestones" with their sizzlin
Not My Experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I went into the upgrade with high expectations for the ribbon. I had read a lot about it, and honestly it just makes a lot of sense. Commands that are grouped logically and presented contextually, while at the same time not being buried in a menu that few will ever see, simply seems like the right way to do things.
At the same time I realized that I have been using Office for many, many years, and the fairly dramatic UI shift would probably result in some learning curve.
I was, however, pleasantly surprised. For the most part, commands are where they should be. If I want to change the alignment of some text I go to the layout tab. (Or just highlight the text and move my mouse toward the fading in popup thingy.) If I want to insert a picture, surprise surprise, I got to the insert tab. It all makes a lot of sense.
Furthermore, in just the couple of months that I've been using Office 2007, I've discovered a lot of functionality I never new existed. (And, as many of you know, most Office users only use a very small fraction of Office's features.)
Each Office upgrade before 2007 has, for the most part, been an exercise in adding features that few will ever use because they don't know they're there. Office 2007's new UI changes that. For many users, it will be like Microsoft added thousands of new features when, in fact, they've been there all along but were never seen.
Well (Score:5, Informative)
2) Want to see how a change will affect your document without changing it? Just put your mouse over a document skin or formatting and the document will temporarly "apply" the changes for you. The formatting will reverse to normal when your mouse is out of the area.
3)The new contextual spelling checker.
4)Building Blocks. Great time saver That's only from the op of my head, but of course if you are a average slashdotter MS could add *real gold* toolbars and you won't like it, so...
Clutter! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just a Few Reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Not once has their response been "where is the file menu?" or "where are my icons?" Each time they've seen the ribbon and thought "Oh, that is smart!" They see how easy it is to change margins or add a Header/Footer and immediately want to know when they can buy it.
Will businesses think it's worth $400 per desk? If it saves that employee about an hour of time every month, because they can do tasks faster now, then it pays for itself quite quickly.
That's not mentioning how much *better* things look when created in Office 2007 using their new features. Have you seen the new shape rendering tools? Professional looking slides can be created in PowerPoint without the aide of the graphic design guys. Same goes for charts.
Employees will make better use of styles in Word, conditional formatting in Excel, all because the features are easier to find now.
People who boo-hoo Microsoft really need to sit down in front of Office 2007 for ten minutes and just check out its new features. Throw out your old ideas of menus and icons and just give it a try before you bash it.
"Features" or functions (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW - the differences in the interface between 2002 an 2003 are almost completely for the sake of upgrading and eye candy alone. Except for the annoying default that checks help ONLINE which is really a huge pain the ass.
I submit that MS spends little time actually bothering to find out what people what, and how they use it and they instead assume that whatever they like must be what we would naturally prefer too. OO is no better either since it follows MS's lead.
Having said that, I can appreciate you folks who have to use spreadsheets to run your business and you might actually have a real need to use some of those high end obscure functions. Me? No. And no thanks. I think it's a shame that you have to run business functions in a glorified spreadsheet and wordprocessor though or that we have an 'Office Suite' that attempts to compose memos and keep the books and make toast and service the wife, etc....maybe that's the approach that's wrong. My wife runs our rental properties and budgets with a spreadsheet and no matter what I tell her about something basic like MS Money she won't use it. And please make no mistake she knows jack shit about Excel and can't use it beyond typing anyway.
Anyway the problem with MS Office is that it's arbitrary. If the new version is still arbitrary then it's shit. If it's new kinds of arbitrary then it's shit. Either make my life easier or go away. I do not need to learn new workarounds.
What's wrong with "it's default format"? (Score:3, Insightful)
All I really want to know is how unobtrusive it can be. Word 2003 seems congenitally incapable of letting me write an entire sentence without doing something to distract me from the thought I'm trying to express. And you have to go all over the place to turn all that crap off. "Ooh! That looks like an e-mail address! Let's have a deep conversation with Outlook then make a hyperlink!" "Ooh! That file server called monday has a name just like a day of the week! Let's capitalize that word!" "Ooh! Someone you never met who worked here a few years ago wrote something with those three words in the title. Let's put some tiny dots underneath!" STFU and let me type.
Re:Related question: Linux alternative to Front Pa (Score:2)
Re:Related question: Linux alternative to Front Pa (Score:2)
Isn't Front Page part of Office? (Score:2)
Re:Don't you mean downgrade? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I've already upgraded.. (Score:4, Informative)
The ability to open large datasets in Excel, instead of having to use vim to figure out what the structure is. I'll be pleasantly surprised if the rest of the features aren't a step backwards, but it'll still be worth it the next time I have to figure out why SAS is choking on some huge text file.
And that's one of the features. (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:And that's one of the features. (Score:4, Funny)
It's on the tools menu.
AutoAstroTurf is on by default, so like, no worries.
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It's on the tools menu.
... and it's labeled 'Beware of the Leopard'
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Or I can right-click on it, open it in Excel, figure out what's going on and start writing the SAS import script, Python analysis, database structure or whathaveyou within 10 seconds of getting the file, instead of puzzling over the man page for awk or sed. No one gives you a gold star (or at least no one gives me a gold star) for being too 1337 to us
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Funny how you are so keen on a feature that MS has been marketing heavilly and that most real users do not care about.
What exactly do you mean by "ties up our services"?
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Let me see if I can translate that:
My business just loves the new features, but I'm not going to tell
Re:I've already upgraded.. (Score:4, Insightful)
My point is, i've explained myself MILLIONS of times to the slashdot crowd and they always point out how those features are useless, misleading or done in other products but they forget the simple fact that Software is a Solution and as long as it solves your needs, fits your budget and is easy to use & integrate then it doesn't matter what other people think.
Too many times i get drilled down for all the wrong reasons, so if you can't find whats right with something on your own then what *I* say won't make any difference to you.
Not my fault this place is stacked with ignorant users.
For a list of features:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_200
As for streamlining our business, we use Microsoft CRM and our smaller offices uses Accounting 2007 Pro and tying everything together through Office 2k7 is easy as 1-2-3. We use services in Windows 2003, Windows Longhorne Server, SharePoint, Jboss Portal, and Jahia app server to tie things together, share files and publish services/data to our clients and extranet/intranet portals.
Users love it, thats all that we needed. Upgrade was a breeze and included as part of our services.
Re:I've already upgraded.. (Score:5, Funny)
But.. how?! You only have 1013 posts!
Re:I've already upgraded.. (Score:5, Funny)
It is possible to explain something more than once per post.
It is possible to explain something more than once per post.
It is possible to explain something more than once per post.
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Software is a Solution and as long as it solves your needs, fits your budget and is easy to use & integrate then it doesn't matter what other people think.
I find this a very interesting statement coming from someone who represents themself as a businessman.
The successful businesspersons I know are always very concerned about what two groups of people are thinking: their customers and their competitors. That is in the front of their minds whenever they are addressing a group that might hold either a
Re:I've already upgraded.. (Score:5, Informative)
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Those that will whine about outlook, we do not use it we use a different groupware setup that does not lock us into Microsoft on the server side.
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You can download a 60-day trial of Office 2007 right now, and one of those versions is the "$150 for three PCs" Student & Home edition.
The reason to upgrade is simple and unavoidable (Score:5, Insightful)
Thus the only way you can work with other people's word documents is to own word. anything else as the parent points out is a waste of valuable time. the cost of word is negligible compared to your time
Re:The reason to upgrade is simple and unavoidable (Score:4, Interesting)
What would you say if you were one of those who didn't upgrade, for those reasons, and someone sent you an indecipherable document?
If this started happening often, and you felt pressured to buy the overpriced but useless software, would you blame the other users? Or Microsoft? Or "business"?
Actually that happened (Score:4, Informative)
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Isn't interoperability one of the problems that Office 2007 (and the upcoming Office 2008 for Mac) solves by using the Office OpenXML format? It is a open, published standard that anybody can use with no license encumbrance; as a standard, a document on one platform SHOULD be the same on any other platform
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LaTeX [wikipedia.org] uses its own internal floating-point emulation based on integers to ensure the output will look exactly the same everywhere. Now, *that* is to think ahead.
Mac compatibility re: pasted images (Score:3, Informative)
Dragged-and-dropped image files from the Finder are fine, as are those put in via Insert > Image. But, copy/paste is done far more often.
This has been going on at least as far back
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I upgraded today I'd be putting a mostly untested, untried, totally unproven product into production on every system in my enterprise. If I did that, the only thing I would be 'ignoring' is the voice of my own experience... ANd that voice is screaming at me not to trust a 1.0 of anything, least of all from Microsoft.
Feel free to jump fi