Slashdot Mirror
Why "Upgrade" To Office 2007
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?."
a) Because Bill says so
b) Because muppets keep sending you files in a new, super incompatible format that you can't open otherwise
switch to OOo and for that matter, why not OOo on Linux... the training costs for the upgrade to Vista and/or office 2007 might as well be considered as similar to those for switching away from the proprietary lockin and moving to truly open formats for your data. Then you will have jumped off the upgrade treadmill and will be free to upgrade at your own pace instead, when you want to rather than when outside pressures force you to...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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...
These arguments are EXACTLY the arguments used with every major innovation in the past.
DOS vs Windows anyone?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
All the article says is "the ribbon interface is less intuitive than the menu driven one, and it takes time to learn".
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
"A question that must be asked then is whether some of the time taken to master Office 2007 would be better used to gain a more advanced knowledge of Office 2003, with the rest of the time being used to do some productive work? After trialling Office 2007 for some weeks, while away from home base, I believe the answer is a resounding yes."
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 time Microsoft releases a new version of office'.
Not all conservatives are stupid,
but it is true that most stupid people are conservative.
- Hume
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.
My work here is dung.
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. I don't know whether they hit an artery.
This seems the least thought through attempt at jumping on the anti-Microsoft bandwagon - Office 2007 is the first version in 12 years that really changes the way you use office to truly make you more productive. There are tools in Office 2007 to let you do some of the things that used to take you upwards of half an hour in under a minute.
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.
There are some useful features in Office 2007. However, you have to evaluate whether those features are necessary enough to overcome the upgrade costs as well as the re-training that will be involved with the new interface. Some people really want/need the new features. The problem for MS is that most users are just fine with the features from Office 97.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But before I answer that, can someone tell me why I should upgrade from Word 95? And the only justification I can think of to upgrade to Word 95 is long filename support.
The only reason to switch to 2007 will be to read the documents that others send you. This is nothing new. When the organisation for which I work switched to 2003, for example, it was not because we needed any of the "functionality" new to 2003. Nor had our users pushed Office to its limits and were crying out for new functionality. Let's be clear, 95% of users use maybe 5% of an office suite's functionality. The other 5% use maybe 50%, at best.
But Microsoft never fails to make the new Office write files, by default, that the old Office can't read. Eventually, one grows fatigued with having to send a reply to every email asking that the sender "save the document in Word 2003, please, so I can open it."
This is the way MS has sold each and every one of its upgrades. It's a tried-and-true strategy for them and they've made billions from it. Why would anyone expect them to change at this juncture?
Give a man a match: warm him for an instant. Douse him in petrol and set him aflame: warm him for the rest of his life.
I don't know what these new "ribbon" menus are or what they look like, but this just prompted me to speak of my biggest pet peeve of Windows menus that came on the scene a few years back: Dynamic menus. What I mean by this is how the drop-down menus off of the toolbar change to reflect the most recently-selected options. Thus every time you pull down a drop-down menu it looks different, and you must seek out the option you need, ususally by clicking on "more options" to see the "full" menu.
Whatever menus look like, they need to be consistent. Menus that change every time you look at them suck.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
As you are the first person who claims to use the colaboration features (I assume that is what you mean by "simplifies processes") I have heard I would love to hear more about how you use it.
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"?
Let me see if I can translate that:
My business just loves the new features, but I'm not going to tell you which new features we love, and why we love them! Nyah nyah!
And you got modded +5 Insightful... Amazing...
Exactly my opinion. I think that the fact that Excel only supported 65K rows a feature. It's bad enough having people who don't understand databases making databases in Access, it's even worse when people try to use Excel to create a database.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I've been here long enough to know the reasons i upgrade aren't the same reasons anyone else would consider it.
7
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.
Eventually more and more customers and clients will send you documents encoded in MS format. You will need to not only read them but edit them and send them back. So far no one has ever been able to create a document in MS WOrd that is 100% platform interchangable. Even MS word on mac is in 100% compatible with ms word on PC, though it's pretty close, the page layouts shift subtly with tables and figures changing positions and dimensions.
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
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What they really need is a class that trains students how to use a word processor, not Word, not Wordperfect, and not OOo Writer.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
WordPerfect 4.x was almost perfect - NO CLUTTER AT ALL. What was on the screen was your document. WP5.1 hid its menus nicely - they were GONE unless you needed them, then you could Alt-= and see them. Still no clutter while editing. Windows programs originally had a menu bar, but were mostly clutter free. Then they got a row of icons (SmartIcons in Ami Pro, later added to MS Office) and a status bar. Word then got a row of menus, TWO ROWS OF ICONS, and a status bar. Now there's more clutter - a "ribbon bar" (and I've only seen screen shots, not used it) and who knows what else. Meanwhile, the point of a word processor is to process your words, not deal with all the clutter on the screen. Anything that sacrifices screen real estate that belongs to your document's words for anything else is not an improvement and not progress. I think in all the race to add features to Word, they've completely forgotten the point of the program.
So someone hates Microsoft. Tough. As a technical editor I use MS Office every day. I can't wait until we adopt Office 2007 because there are features there that will make my life easier and I am not a moron, so I will not have any problems with the "learning curve" that Office presents. Since I work for a government contractor, our upgrades are a long way off, but eventually 2007 will become the standard whether you upgrade or not.
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 first into Office 2007... It is "early adopters" who miss some crucial detail (or who get hammered with an enterprise-wide shutdown when the first zero-day bug is successfully exploited by virus and worm writers) who make my job simpler... Who, in the long run, pay my bills through huge emergency consulting fees, and make my arguments for security that much easier to make.
Again, we've got a huge installed base of Office 2003 users who are doing great--why would I disrupt their productivity for one or two minor improvements? Nobody in my enterprise is doing spreadsheets large enough to trigger the bug described in this thread... With that exception, what "Feature" is missing from Office 2003 that I need so desperately... I don't see it yet, and probably the only reason we (eventually) do it is to "keep up with the Joneses"--but that's not for another year or more.
As for Vista? I'm hoping to ride out Windows XP until we can move the desktops away from Windows entirely. We'll see if I get my wish or not...
Who did what now?
Yup, and soon the same idiot Lunix fanboys who tell people that missing features in Open Office are a non-issue because "Yuo have teh suorce code so write it yuorself!" will be complaining that no one could POSSIBLY ever figure out how to turn off a Office feature two menus deep, like they do with bulletting or auto-correct.
As for you, goober -- I realize you've never had to make a spreadsheet bigger than "Case: $48.95, Motherboard: $89.95, ..." but some of us grownups use computers to do real computing.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Not seen 2007, probably won't. But THE biggest thing that irks me about Office, Word in particular, as we use 2002, is that things which seem absolutely commonsense to use EASILY, BECAUSE they are rarely used are strangely difficult or damn near impossible. Why is making a TOC so problematic and why does it take so much work. Why do pasted in tables take on a margin arrangement life of their own? Why do random words think they have to be spelled checked in French when the other 99% of the docyument is clearly written in English and is spell checked in English? Why is formatting text in a footer so damn hard? Especially something like not counting an arbitrary number of pages up front, like the rest of the publishing industry for the past 150 years? The point is, these things are hard because they're only used rarely. I'm sure that if had to monkey with it every day I'd memorize the 90 steps needed to do it. But why? Also why does font mapping between MS office and Notes just suck? Seems that 'Arial' should be 'Arial' and if it's 10pt in one doc it shouldn't naturally be converted to 24pt bold in another.
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.
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.
This is not my sandwich.
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 customer or a competitor, even slashdot. But you appear to be too independent a thinker to worry about those outsiders. By buying now into MS Office 2007 (and I presume Vista in all its glory), you are willing to pioneer new approaches to business data flows.
That means taking your eye off the ball for a moment while you budget in the added costs of software, hardware, and arrange for installations and staff training. And you can bet you will be distracted a few more times when you find that the training has to be modified to fit unexpected aspects of usage, new procedures need to be set up to take advantage of the new capabilities, and those new procedures have to be shaken down before they work right.
Meanwhile, some of your competitors are planning to stick with their old systems for a while. The money and effort they are NOT putting into an upgrade process is available for other things— such as a concerted effort to target your customer base. They can and will promise demonstrated performance in critical areas of customer satisfaction where, for the moment, all you can offer is blue sky promises of being able to do better than you used to do. The money you are spending on your upgrade they can and will spend on new customer incentive programs. They can and will say that they are watching your experiment very closely, and will make a similar change if it looks like it will work out for you.
If you are the first in your industry to take on an expensive and unproven upgrade, your customer base will shrink; your revenues will be depressed; and your immediate expenses will clearly be higher. Unless it is sliding toward bankruptcy and needs a miracle, it is always better to be the second business in the industry to do the upgrade dance. Wait until someone else has blazed the trail; pick up his ex customers while he's busy planning his route and building bridges, learn from his experiences and avoid his mistakes.
A quote borrowed from Jeff Duntemann is appropriate: It's the pioneers who catch the arrows.
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.
What is the lead poster smoking, and are the police aware of it?
Almost the entire corporate world uses MS Word. So how does an upgrade to 2007 bring a "steep learning curve"? O2007 isn't all that different, aside from some GUI changes. And I'll bet they can be disabled back to a 'classic' view, just like Vista can.
Sadly, once again, the Slashdot community is on the wrong side of progress. I guess that's why their darlings, Lunix and Open Office, will always be chasing MS's tail lights.
The ribbons are new, and can be frustrating at times, but as I've already been through DOS, DR-DOS and its pseudo-windows, WordStar, Multimate, LetterPerfect for DOS, WordPerfect for DOS, WordPerfect for Windows, and every incarnation of MS Word since Word 2, I guess I'll take it in my stride, just like I have the previous ones.
I'm over 60, and still am surprised how "stick in the mud" a lot of people a fraction of my age appear to be when it comes to changing what they are familiar with for something newer.
"It was good enough for Grandpa, so it's good enough for me!" is such a retro reaction to change that I'll never understand it.
Will those of you who think that you know what you are doing, get out of the way of those of us who know what we are doi
In my company we are using Office 2000 and will not change until The Beast of Redmond curses us for doing so.
Why?
What we have works fine.
In a successful corporation with thousends of workes doing nothing seems to be the best course of action in many instances.