Customer Reviews

Microsoft Office XP Professional Special Edition Upgrade [Old Version]

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've been using this software for about three months now and have installed it on seven or eight different machines that I maintain, and honestly, the best I can say is that the actual upgrade process is very smooth--this Office suite comes on one CD instead of two, it scans for previous versions, offers full installation options, and explains very clearly what it is doing. When I upgraded to Office 2000, the software took upwards of an hour; with XP, the upgrades took from ten to forty minutes, depending on the speed of the machine I was upgrading to.
You will first notice how nice everything looks and the new "Smart Pane," which is supposed to be a window with what Office thinks you will want to do. The contents of this pane include your most recently used documents and options to create new documents.
The menus look a lot like the DHTML effects common on many web sites--menu options are "highlighted" when you mouse over them. A few other things have changed, but the changes are mostly cosmetic.
The Smart Pane, which is really more of a "pain" than a "pane," is obtrusive to me--I am what is called a "power user," i.e., I use MS Office for about four hours a day, rely on it, and am very familiar with it. When I open an application, I want wide, open space. I often close the Smart Pane without using its features, instead opening documents the way I have for years-either by opening them from the Work menu I added or by clicking to them. This Smart Pane is supposed to close when you open something, but sometimes it doesn't, meaning I have to click to close it.
Worse, the Smart Pane automatically opens when you want to do something it thinks requires many options. For example, if I want to modify a style in Word, the Smart Pane appears and offers me myriad options for editing my styles. This whole process of opening the Smart Pane slows everything down (I'm running a Pentium III 933 mHz with 128 mb RAM and a 7200 rpm ultra ATA hard drive with relatively few applications installed; got to keep it clean!!).
Editing styles provides a good example of how bloated the software is. You may recall from Office 2000 that all the styles were either built in or created by the user. Now, however, XP creates new styles based on what it finds in your document. For example, if you have a italicized one of your Heading 1s, XP will show the regular Heading 1 style and the Heading 1 style with italics. Imagine how many such styles you might have in your document; with these new additions, XP has easily doubled or tripled the number of styles I must wade through to get the one I want.
XP slows down every machine it's loaded on. My oldest machine, a Dell Pentium 75 running Win 98, was still chugging along quite nicely, even with Office 2000 installed. Now, however, after I've installed XP on it, it moves so slowly that it's almost laughable-clicked buttons bubble up comically. The worst part is that the computer is much, much slower, even if I'm not using any of the XP applications. I guess there's too much XP stuff now running in the background.
I have a few gripes with Word, many related to printing problems, but one is particularly laughable, typical of Microsoft. Now, when Word crashes, it politely tells you that it has done so and offers to send a report of the problem to Bill. It swears that it won't send any personal data. The first few times I saw this, I thought, sure, why not, send it, maybe it'll help. Hah! Each time, without fail, my computer froze! So, instead of having just one program crash, I ended up with a frozen machine. Remember, I'm primarily using a new, major name machine with little other software installed. Learned not to do that real quick!
There is one change I do like in Word. Since I do a lot of editing for a living, I find the new style of showing comments much better than the previous method. In Office 2000, comments were shown as "sticky notes" that appeared when you moused over them. Now, however, the comments appear as neat rounded squares in the margin. They look good on the screen and they print out well for others to read.
Another major reason I upgraded was because of a fatal flaw in FrontPage 2000. I have detailed more of this problem in my review of FP2002, but essentially, FP2000 could not publish my web site because it was too large. I was hoping that the bundled FP2002 would have fixed that bug. It did, but it has other compatibility issues that MS hasn't been able to resolve with most web hosts.
My relatively low rating is for the upgrade, not for the overall quality of the product. The product, which crashes at least as frequently as Office 2000, seems to be no more functional than its predecessor, meaning that the upgrade is necessary only for those who want to have the latest thing. The best news is that I've learned how to take advantage of MS's support discussion groups. The answers and workarounds I found in those groups were a thousand times more helpful than MS's pitiful Help or canned tech support messages. Again: Don't pay for support-go to their support groups for help first.
In short, this is something of a "non-upgrade," and will most likely cause more problems than it will fix.

I have been using the Office XP Beta for several months. The icons highlight better, the task panes are very helpful, especially in PowerPoint, and the applications run snappier, although a speedy PC always helps.

The most interesting feature with the largest potential is Smart Tags. Many are built into the applications, and they allow the user access to many commands right at the point of need as opposed to having to use the menus. As more people develop Smart Tags, they will be available for downloads and installation on any PC. With the capability of Smart Tags, almost any feature or function whether local or over the Internet can be implemented. Many previously custom developed applications can now be implemented with small amounts of Visual Basic code implemented as Smart Tags. Smart Tags can even be implemented in Internet Explorer with Microsoft free Web Components.

The two negative features. One is on-line registration which will limit flexibility in where Office XP is installed. The second is the fact the Outlook 2002 will not allow emails containing exe, vbs, or 11 other extensions to be read. These attachments are held by Outlook and not available to the receiving user to stop the spread of viruses. There should be a way to override this, but the release version allows no override.

Microsoft is still successfully putting out their fabulous Office suite. Office 2000 was the perfect piece of software. In my experience, it was reasonably stable, had great options, and ran efficiently. I couldn't imagine anything else that needed to be added. Unfortunately, Office XP is a lot slower and just doesn't have such a polished feel to it like 2000 does. It feels overly bogged down with unnecessary graphics (especially on the menus) and is a lot slower than 2000.

Sure, its still a good product and I only give it 2 stars by comparison to 2000. There is absolutely no reason to upgrade! Don't get tricked by Microsoft. If you are buying Office for the first time, see if you can find a copy of 2000 somewhere.

Office XP has a few new features but some of the things you have grown to rely on are gone.

For example, in File\Open, you used to be able to type in a word and every file with that word in the title would pop up. No more. Now you have to type in *word* to find your file.

If you are drafting documents in both Outlook and Word, the machine will still hang up. I could go on.

I have the newest and most powerful hardware and have all the MS-Office products. I have used them for years. I am not a Microsoft basher. I am just very disappointed in this product.

As a publisher, author of 28 Books, 109 revised editions, six translations and over 500 magazine articles as well as a consultant to the book publishing industry, I spend a lot of time using my computer. I need the best tools. Office XP is an expensive disappointment.

Dan Poynter, Para Publishing.

...Well, as you've seen above (or maybe now below) this is basically what used to be known as MS Office Premium...from what I've experienced and seen it has been remade very well I can only recommend it to anyone who will actually need all of the features. For those of you that don't, compare the price of the standard or professional update's with which ever additional programs that you might need. Now my gripes:

1. Where is the update version of this product?! For those of us that have already spent the money for Office Premium 2000...I think that we deserve it, Mr. Gates!

2. The mandatory registration; Bill, I don't like the idea that there is no way of knowing what information is REALLY being sent to Microsoft...to the users: Register by phone, that's my recomendation to you...

In the interests of full disclosure, my thanks to Microsoft for providing me with a subscription copy of Office XP. I wouldn't own XP if I had to pay for it.

The new features in XP, be they useful (like better document recovery), bearable (like the activation procedure), or merely easily disabled (like task panes), simply do not provide a compelling reason for most users to upgrade. This software costs slightly less than my first car did... would that I could spend that kind of money on non-essentials!

So who should upgrade? I would say that group consists mostly of large businesses looking to take advantage of XP's new collaboration features and owners of Office 97 Small Business Edition who would like one of the applications not contained in that package. And why this version? Because it contains EVERYTHING, including a very cool mouse, and it's only available for a limited time.

In parting, shame on Microsoft for continuing their trend of ridiculously understated and actually steep system requirements. You really do need a new system (P-3/Athlon, 128MB RAM, and a 17" monitor) to get the most from this software - given the wide install base of 64MB Celerons with 15-inch screens, this is a travesty. Linux anyone?

After you install this product, you will be forced to call Microsoft for permission to use it again if you re-format your hard drive and reinstall. In other words, you will not "own" anything except the right to beg Microsoft for permission to use what you have paid for. If you want this, please go ahead and order this software.

This is a very pricey suite of applications, but if you are thinking about Office 2000 forget it, go to XP. This is the greatest version of Office I have ever worked with (that would be all of them to date)and Microsoft has listened to the customer. The voice recognition engine (L&H) is very good out of the box, and the improvements to Outlook, Publisher, and FrontPage are right on target. Access supports previous versions (2000 by default), Task panes, clipboard, search, and everything else that is shared between the programs are nearly flawless. SmartTags are GREAT. If you can't tell by now, I love this product. You get what you pay for.......

I purchased this upgrade, because MS said it was basically 30% faster than Ofc 2000. NOT!... It's more like 30% slower!

I use an Intel PIV 2.4 GHz with 1Gig DDR RAM with twin 80 WD SE drives, and an ATI 9000 Pro 128Meg video. There is not a lot of fluff apps loaded on this machine, because it is my primary business computer. Office XP Pro is amazingly much slower than Office 2000, especially Outlook. Between messages, it seems that it takes forever to load. Word is not used as my editor. Even with all the Service Packs (2) and updates installed. Even the machine performance degraded after installation. Prior to installation, speed wise, the computer would average 1100+ on pc pit stops performance test. Now, it averages 950+. Go figure...

Functionality is basically the same as Office 2000 with one exception, Photo Draw has been removed from Office XP. (One less useable app, more money for Ofc XP). The graphics in each app is improved in Ofc XP, but what does that really provide?

If you already have Office 2000 Pro, do not upgrade to Ofc XP Pro. Office XP Pro is definately not worth the additional $$$.
The only gain apparent is the improved graphic interface, but even that is not much, and not all that.

nothing new. It's slightly better versions of everything, nothing nessisary, even for buisness. Office 2000 was excellent, inovative, and still great! It's a much better deal to get O2000 now, O2002 is too exprensive for nothing great