Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office Standard 2007 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(35)

 

 

Microsoft's Office Standard 2007 is the version that includes the programs most people will be looking for in an office suite: Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. While Microsoft did make some improvements, many changes have users frustrated and mad.

Pros

+ Standard version includes the 4 programs you actually want!
+ Like most new MS suites, allows for easier transfer between machines
+ Allows you to use on your home desktop AND your laptop!! Huge plus!!
+ New open document format based on xml - good for techies
+ Alternatively, you can still use the doc format you know and love
+ Excel now supports larger documents with more fields!
+ Cool new Powerpoint extras
+ Once you do overcome the learning curve, design has some plusse
+ Preloaded with Vista OEM computers, so install is MUCH faster than old version

Cons

- A list price of $400 means many will forgo Outlook and buy Home & Student suite for MUCH LESS
- The ribbon puts things in WEIRD places
- Microsoft disabled classic menus so you can't find stuff ... ARGH!!!
- Startup times seem a little slower ... why????
- Strangely slow performance with Word

The general hatred for the ribbon is well known. Microsoft Word and Excel have drawn the most heat. It took everybody years to learn those nested menus and hard to find functions. Now they are all moved!!!!

Actually, the ribbon wouldn't be so bad if you could have your regular old classic menus above it. Once you learn the ribbon, there's some logic to the way things have been relocated. Still, this was a huge blunder and I wonder if MS will back track on that.

This guy also includes Outlook, which is a MUST for me since I have to use Outlook on my work PC. I tried using the exported files in the new vista calendar apps, and none of them really worked that well. The professional Microsoft Office Professional 2007 FULL VERSION and ultimate Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 FULL VERSION [DVD] suite versions also include outlook.

Yet why the list price of $400? The Home and Student Office 2007 suite Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 is $150 and includes everything here except for Outlook. Is Outlook worth $250 now? To be fair, there are cheaper upgrade versions. Still, I may be switching to a new email / calendar / productivity program all-together.

The new XML doc format is Microsoft's way of getting away from the proprietary .doc format. This will aggravate some people too, but you can just save everything in the 2003 format. I like the new format and I think it will catch on with time.

Despite the short comings, once you get past the learning curve the programs themselves are improved.

Enjoy!!!

The product requires activation, which includes sending machine identification information to Microsoft.

The good news is that the Office Standard license allows installation on both a desktop system and a laptop. It also allows you to transfer the license to new systems, over time.

From the license: "Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device. ... You may install another copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device. ... You may reassign the license to a different device any number of times, but not more than one time every 90 days."

I would like to know which genius came up with this little gem. This must be the worst "update" of a software in history.

As I was forced to buy a new computer, I was "blessed" with this malady of a software.

Despite the appealing first impression - the new Office presents itself with a modern and colorful layout, the debilitating flaws become all too quickly obvious once one starts to work with it.

The new feature, the Ribbon, is one of those things that look good only on paper. (like those state-of-the-art kitchen which are designed by very smart men, designers, engineers... but alas no cooks...) If you, like me, are one of those frequent users who work with the software on a daily basis, are very familiar with all its features and value the option of customizing your settings and toolbars in order to streamline (=timesaving) your individual processes, you are in for a major disappointment. The Ribbon is static - no customizing. Microsoft allegedly surveyed thousands of users and put the most popular features in so-called groups on this Ribbon. Great, if you are one of those surveyed users - a nightmare, if you were taking full advantage of individualizing (=streamlining) features. It is sort of like having a closet full of nice clothes, and then a survey shows that "gray goes with everything" and we are all stuck with the same gray clothes.

Instead of doing my work, I spent hours searching for features that are now hidden, moved, or simply do not exist anymore. I have been cursing at my screen, for hours. And I am getting more and more irritated as I am looking at my work which wants to be done.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am all for innovation, but not for innovation's sake. And I don't mind at all learning new things, if they prove to, in fact, improve things. And nope, there was not one "new thing" that made me say "ah, now that's a great improvement."

Sorry, Microsoft, but simply moving things around, throwing features out and making everything more uniform (=static) does not count as innovation in my book.

It appears what happened was someone sitting around the old Microsoft Offices said "Hey, I got a great idea! Let's make Office look really pretty! We may have to take away some of the functionality, but hey, it will look great!" My problem is I need tools such as a workhorse spreadsheet program, a powerful word processor, a flexible database, and stunning presentation program to successfully complete my job. Upon purchasing Office 2007, I was expecting expanded features and functions to assist me in doing so, just like every update had previously provided me. Instead I found myself with a redesigned interface (which takes time to learn) and an actual reduction of features from Office 2003 (which Microsoft freely admits occurred, because they couldn't fit a few of the features into the new interface). So what you are in fact spending your hard earned money on is a group of programs designed to look really good (with neato 3D graphics, wow!), but at the expense of taking away your tools rather than expanding them.

Waste of money? Um, yeah.

I recommend waiting until Microsoft finally comes to the realization that how the software looks is truly the least of my concerns because I have work to do.

In Office 2007, Microsoft has apparently decided that the idea of menus is outdated, so they've eliminated them and replaced them with the "ribbon". While at first this seems easier to use, it will require you to relearn how to do everything in Office.

Want to insert a cross reference in Word? Hmm, well, I used to do that using the menus, now I have to hunt through all the annoying ribbon items to see if I can figure out where they've moved it. Plus, unlike the menus, you have no ability to determine what the shortcut key is.

Maybe I can search for it in the help system. Searching for "insert cross reference" returns no useful hits. (Although it does seem to be quite good at finding information about templates which I never use). How is it that they can make help so useless??

Plus, if you don't like the ribbon, there's no way of configuring it to use menus instead. You're stuck with it.

I commend Microsoft for attempting to increase usability, but this new feature certainly doesn't make me any more productive. It seems to be change for the sake of change.

If you're thinking of upgrading or buying this new, keep in mind that you'll essentially have to relearn how to use each application. Things that you've known how to do for years will now be useless.

Stay with an earlier version if you can.

When I got a copy of this new version of Office I was eager to try it out, but luckily I was cautious enough to select the install option that keeps 2003 live in your computer. The results of using 2007 were atrocious, and the only program I did not have an issue with was Outlook (by the way, you can't keep Outlook 2003 if you are installing 2007), and I did not see any real improvements with it either.

There are three huge issues with the new version of Office. First, performance goes down big time. You will feel like your PC is crawling and even though I doubled my RAM to 2GB I still experienced issues with this. I was also affected by frequent fatal errors that caused the programs to close, especially with Excel. Second, backwards compatibility is a joke, both PowerPoint and Excel files are messed up when saved in the old format and opened with 2003. A clear case was an Excel file that I saved in 2003 and sent to a client, and when discussing over the phone he mentioned that the scale was off. I opened the file from my Sent Items (using 2007) and everything looked OK, but when I did the same with 2003, the chart was all screwed up. Also, if you paste a chart as an image in an email using 2007 and send it to someone that has 2003 they will just see a black rectangle. Finally, your productivity will be cut in half, because Microsoft completely changed the layout of the menus, and to tell you the truth, these are less intuitive than before. They have a more "futuristic" look, but that is just about it.

Bottom line is that after a couple of weeks of trying to make it work, I decided that I was not going to make the effort. I will put it off until I absolutely have to move to the newest version. Microsoft basically made these programs harder to use and limited their performance. Just a horrendous effort on their part!

Here's the deal killer for me: the caret (aka text insertion line, text mouse, or the line that leads in front of the text as you type), disappears every time you type a key. So if you are a normal typer, that line will disappear for whole words at a time only flashing back in skittishly as you go along, or when you stop. I am not talking about the mouse pointer itself, which you can toggle to disappear or not in the keyboard and mouse control panel. This is actually the line that follows your text.

What is so annoying is it feels like the program is never fully keeping up with your typing because there is a very tiny lag in the time the letter shows up. Also, the caret comes in and out irregularly, so it's not like it is just gone, it is erratic and distracting. It is very hard to type this way; you are always wondering if you just mis-struck a key. The problem is bad in Word, but really really really bad in Outlook.

Why is it that Microsoft has to add all these bells and whistles and then blow the actual simple act of typing? I am using Vista on a brand new top of the line Dell notebook with a high end graphic card. Just to compare and make sure it wasn't my laptop or Vista, I loaded up Office 2003 and it worked just fine. This seems to be an 0ffice 2007 issue.

As it a happens, I uninstalled office 2003 because I already had it on an old computer and ended up downloading and installing OpenOffice for my Word and PowerPoint app needs and then use Mozilla Thunderbird with the calendar add-on for my Outlook needs. This stuff works so much better than this Microsoft nightmare, and it's free. There is no delay at all in the typing or the text insertion line following the type. Who uses MS Explorer when you can use Firefox? Well, I recommend bailing on Office as well. I regret having wasted my money on this Frankenstein.

The new ribbon design is supposed to make it easier to learn and use. It may be for some new users but for experienced users, it isn't. This version takes away some critical nuts & bolts customization features and many tasks now take longer to perform. This is not due to the learning curve, it is the inherent nature of the way the ribbon works. Once you are familiar with the program, nothing is faster than the old menu structure. If Microsoft added an option to allow users to choose between menus and ribbons, it would be the best of both worlds, satisfying the needs of both new and experienced users. The new version does not run macros as fast however. My recommedation for existing users: keep Office 2003 for as long as you can and consider going to Open Office when Microsoft no longer supports 2003 (unless they restore the functionality in a newer release of 2007).

Sorry Microsoft, but your "ribbon" user interface is the most retarded upgrade feature ever. It renders all your Office applications useless. I have no interest spending hours to learn a completely different UI and to recustomize the toolbar all over again (I'm not even sure if it's even possible to customize the "ribbon"). The ribbon is ugly and WAY, WAY, WAY, WAY too big.

My advice: try to avoid upgrading for as long as possible.

While I personally use WordPerfect Suite 8, the best office suite ever programmed, for reports and writing projects, I keep a version of Microsoft Office to be compatible with my clients, and for Outlook and PowerPoint (both of which are decent programs). I decided with my new computers to move up from Office 2000 to the current version. I wish now I had bought Office 2003. Each component of Office 2007 is slow to load, slow to respond, just plain slow to do anything. The interface in not intuitive and I have to search for the old familiar functions. I am using XP Pro, so that may be an issue regarding startup speed, and yes, the computer hardware in a few years will improve to the point even this dog will appear fast.

Being a user of WordPerfect since 1985 and WordPerfect Office since its beginning I have encountered "improved" suites for both Word and WordPerfect office that actually were less functional and more buggy than the predecessor. The new programmers, using the latest and greatest programming language and methods, think that they have produced the be all and end all version, with latest jazzy snazzy interface. (This applies to WordPerfect office as well, which is why I use the Win95 era Version 8 rather than the latest.) But often they produce abominations, such as Office 2007.

So buyer beware, it is indeed a dog, at least when using XP Pro, and an ugly dog at that (considering the interface). If I hadn't already spent the money, I would give OpenOffice another try. The "user experience" surely cannot be worse, and may even be better ... and it is certainly not overpriced.

Last, I really have to wonder ... do the people that develop and oversee these software projects actually use their own product ... I mean rigorously use the software. If so, how could they let such products ship? Or does Microsoft simply not care, since they virtually own the market.

If this is useful to anyone I will be surprised, but at least I feel better. Now to a cup of coffee while I wait for Excel to load.