ActiveWin reviews Office 2007, and concludes: “It’s an innovative interface yes, but will the benefits outweigh the changes? That’s for users to decide. My personal say is getting used to the interface should not be a problem for many since the familiar tools are organized in ways that makes it convenient for the user to access both new and previously hidden features. This makes the interface more intelligent and more aware of what the user is doing, presenting the right tools for the task at hand. I am proud to say: this is an Office release I definitely look forward to using everyday.”
Lovely product, can’t wait for the Mac version. Nice release Office team (Y)
//Lovely product//
No it isn’t. Non-standard. Sole-source supplier. Only available for one platform. No cross-platform support (that is, no fully interoperable application available for another platform). Expensive.
No ISO/IEC 26300 support. No SVG support. No PDF support except via plugin.
It has lock-in written all over it, with “binary blobs” in the file formats. Virtually a new product, so expect a slew of “version 1.0” hitches.
It has a new GUI, so it will require significant retraining. It may also break accessibility, so it possibly cannot be used wherever disabled access is a requirement.
My advice would be to avoid it like the plague.
Edited 2006-11-18 03:13
Shut up.
//Shut up.//
What, are you saying that I shouldn’t tell people about the dismal shortcomings of this hyper-expensive product?
Exactly why shouldn’t I?
Edited 2006-11-19 01:17
I think he meant “talk with your pocket book.”
For 90+ % of the population, everything you mentioned doesn’t matter.
//For 90+ % of the population, everything you mentioned doesn’t matter.//
Over-priced, under-performed, unnecessary change and lacking capability doesn’t matter? People don’t like to change, especially if it is the case that what they already have works well enough and they have gotten used to it.
Not to mention that in a few years you will have to buy this product all over again because of what it fails to support now and because Microsoft will change the format yet again.
I think you will find that a few of those objections will occur to far more than 10% of potential customers.
Edited 2006-11-19 05:43
> No cross-platform support
Mac version should be ready soon.
> No PDF support except via plugin.
It’s Adobe to blame not MS. Anyway the pluin in free and it works so I don’t see your point.
For me it’s way better than OO / MSO2003 and any other office tools I’ve used before. Sure you need couple of days to get in touch with new UI … but after that it runs great.
>Mac version should be ready soon.
Ok. What about Linux/BSD/other OSes versions?
>It’s Adobe to blame not MS. Anyway the pluin in free and it works so I don’t see your point.
What, Adobe made the Office 2007? AFAIK, PDF specifications are open, so it’s up to MS to implement them in their Office suite, not Adobe’s problem.
Edited 2006-11-20 14:06
Maybe you should research a topic before spouting knee-jerk responses.
Office 2007 did have out-of-the-box pdf support, but Adobe threatened to sue them over it (in the EU courts, of course, since the EU is predisposed to rule agains Microsoft in any and all matters regardless of the merits of the case). So Microsoft pulled pdf support out of Office 2007 and are now offering it as a free downloadable plugin instead. And Adobe is still making noises about suing.
Adobe felt that its monopoly in Office->PDF conversion tools was threatened by Office 2007 supporting pdf. Adobe went so far as to propose to Microsoft that Microsoft could include PDF support if they raise the price of Office 2007 so as not to undercut Adobe’s own Office->PDF tools (this is known as collusion and price-fixing). Micrsoft refused to do that, so they pulled native pdf support and are offering the downloadble plugin instead.
As for PDF being “open”, the specs might be, but Adobe reserves the right to sue anyone that implements those specs, according to their whim.
Even though I was impressed by some of the demos that I saw in video interviews a while back, I haven’t been as impressed with the new UI now that I’ve actually gotten my own hands on it. I had allowed myself to be convinced by the marketing that somehow MS had found a way to make their UI so good that retraining would be a trivial issue. The new UI does make features more apparent overall, and I think the new UI is better than the old. Unfortunately, even I felt like I could use some retraining with the new UI.
I agree, it’s a good move, but there are some seriously annoying things. Some of the icon locations will take a while to get used to because they’re in wierd places.
Also, I have a free-scrolling mouse, and if I touch the scrollwheel while my mouse is over the ribbon, it starts to go mad.
My third grudge is that the contextual formatting toolbar that pops-up when you select something is not very consistent, 4 times out of 5, it appears when you don’t want it to, and doesn’t appear when you do.
As I said above, it’ll take some getting used to
Mucked around with it a bit the other day. Spent most of my time trying to make it look and feel like Office 2003. When I couldn’t, I gave up and wiped the drive on the test machine.
Bottom line, this version is too different from previous versions. Training and support is going to be a b*tch. Thank you very much for nothing, Microsoft.
I suppose that Visual Studio will soon come in the new Windows Vista recent Microsoft sk.. I mean OS style, so we can all learn all the new and revolutionary Microsoft’s UI ideas.
Edited 2006-11-17 17:35
I just hope they fixed the very annoying behavior of that “intelligent” toolbar which in Beta2 would not show me the tool I needed and thanks to the new UI I could not find them…
Still playing with it sometimes and this is just in the way of productivity with close to zero benefits.
Well, it takes time to get used to the new UI, as will always happen.
You can still acess the old menus if you can’t find what you are looking for.
The whole point of the ribbon is to bring out features that people did not know were there, but actually needed/wanted. Menus were obviously not doing the trick anymore (since there were so many features that people did not know about).
Open Document Format support. The product is promising but the lack of ODF support will probably hurt in long term although there is some workaround like plugins. Too bad because I don’t really see a real reason why Microsoft should not include it.
It’s pointless, and CERTAINLY isn’t worth the money.
Good thing I got it of BT in any case. The UI is horrid, why change something which doesn’t need to be changed?
Memory consumption has also doubled, and word for example, is no where near as snappy as the office 2003 and prior versions (too much time spent rendering the god awful UI)
I’ve quickly gone back to Office XP which is what I was using before.
If you didn’t have to pay for this release, it might be worth the money, but to be honest, it’s the same crap from MS, all they’ve done is try and spruce the interface up a little more – and done a pretty weak job of it.
I can’t see any business changing to this version, the pointless retraining and lost productivity isn’t worth the effort. NOTHING OF VALUE IS ADDED.
Honestly: what is the killer feature that makes this a “must have?”
For me, msft has not put a “must have” feature in office since 1997. Except for msft’s file format switcherro scam, what is the compelling reason to upgrade?