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Frisco

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 24, 2002
2,475
69
Utopia
I had a recent thread on how IE 7 sucks and received some criticism.

Any way tried the new Office today. It will drive the business world nuts. The "Ribbon" sucks! It is so confusing. More so in Word than Excel.

It took me a few minutes to learn how to open a doc.

It sucks!

Yes I hate MS, but I am trying my best to give this and IE 7 an objective review.

Microsoft usually takes one step back with each release, this time they took 3 steps back. Okay maybe more than this. I remember being a Senior at Rutgers University 1996, working for the college newsletter with Office Mac and Quark. It was better than Office 2007 Windows.
 
In Microsoft's eyes, the more complicated and eye-candy full the interface is, the better.

It's progressively gotten more cluttered, more complicated, more useless, and more "fluff".

I don't see any reason to buy a new version on the Windows side.

reality


(1000th post :p )
 
OK. Well I've spent a few hours trying to use the new Microsoft office, and I can't even use the new interface. It's really annoying and far from simple. I'm debating switching from 2000 to 2003 at the office, ahead of the 2007 release. Can you turn the new interface off (aka Classic mode)?
 
joshuawaire said:
OK. Well I've spent a few hours trying to use the new Microsoft office, and I can't even use the new interface. It's really annoying and far from simple. I'm debating switching from 2000 to 2003 at the office, ahead of the 2007 release. Can you turn the new interface off (aka Classic mode)?

It can't be turned off. Office 2003 is the best in my opinion. Companies should stick with that for years, except MS is creating a new .doc standard called .docx to force everyone to upgrade for compatiablility reasons.

Monolopies suck!

yes it's still a beta2, but this is as good as will get
 
Frisco said:
It can't be turned off. Office 2003 is the best in my opinion. Companies should stick with that for years, except MS is creating a new .doc standard called .docx to force everyone to upgrade for compatiablility reasons.

Monolopies suck!

I mean I sat down today for several hours trying to use it. It's more annoying and complicated than iWork. I don't know what we are going to do at the office. We are due for an Office upgrade. It's seems wasteful to spend the money on 2003, with 2007 around the corner---but the interface is really frustrating. I don't see 2007 being deployed corporately. Retraining would have to be required!

Maybe by 2007's ship date, there will be a classic menu feature.
 
joshuawaire said:
I mean I sat down today for several hours trying to use it. It's more annoying and complicated than iWork. I don't know what we are going to do at the office. We are due for an Office upgrade. It's seems wasteful to spend the money on 2003, with 2007 around the corner---but the interface is really frustrating. I don't see 2007 being deployed corporately. Retraining would have to be required!

Maybe by 2007's ship date, there will be a classic menu feature.

Maybe a classic mode, but I doubt seriously it will happen--this is in beta2, they are looking for bugs that is it. They are trying to create a new standard. The new .docx will force companies to upgrade. Yes Office 2007 sucks big time.

Whatever you decide to do an upgrade from either Office 2000 or Office 2002 (XP) to Office 2003 is a waste of money.

Wait until MS forces you to upgrade with their new closed format. Even then I would seriously consider something Open Source.
 
I've been trying it out. It not that bad to use but [i think] it looks quite nice :)

I was a little lost in there to start with, but soon got to grips with everything. I think it looks nice...but I tend to like pretty things *marvels at shiny pen on desk* However performance (in parallels albeit) absolutely sucks! And as for the lack of menus?! Don't get me started on that!

Overall...mixed feeling. I hope the next mac office is streets ahead again - I think 2007 has overtaken us (albeit in a strange and fanciful way).

Uber
 
am i the only one who likes it? sure, the interface is a bit "big" but i don't find it cluttered. the new word and powerpoint interfaces i think are a much better way to display everything you need without being overcrowded. the panels are quite nice. and outlook actually works! 2003 and previous were hard to use didn't work well with my e-mail accounts, and even though there's a lot of new features it seems less complex. i notice all the tons of stuff but don't feel overwhelmed. also rss is nice. however, i've noticed a few missing features in the rss area like being able to keep only the last 10 or whatever rss messages and automatically delete older ones when the new ones come in (or am i missing something?) it also doesn't seem any slower than 2003, but then again my machine is fast and has lots of ram. im fairly sure i'm going to buy it.

oh, i haven't used excel or anything else much so i can't comment on those.

btw wtf is an xps file? is it like pdf? i created one from word but couldn't open it with anything.
 
homerjward said:
am i the only one who likes it?
I like it, too. It just "feels" nicer than previous versions of Office. I've just played around with it a bit so far, but I could definitely see myself using this on a consistent basis. Oh, and as for the XPS file: http://geekswithblogs.net/kit/archive/2005/10/31/58601.aspx

It's basically Microsoft's crappy new proprietary format that is going to try to compete with pdf. :p
 
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