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?."

Comments

Don't you mean downgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

More bloatware != Upgrade. Mod me insightful, and you won't regret it.

I've already upgraded..

[cybrthng]

And if i have to explain the reasons to you, its really not worth your time is it? The fact is my business loves it, my users love it and it ties up our services and simplifies our processes so much better than 2003 that it was worth it.

So my point is, you either have a already researched features you like and will run with or you ignore everything and pretend because you don't upgrade no one else will.

Re:I've already upgraded..

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Have you ever considered that you're mildly retarded?

Not my fault this place is stacked with ignorant users.

Right. That was funny, tell us another one!

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.

If you're already running Longhorn server you're either a fool or in your mother's basement. At the most you work at a small business where the head shed doesn't know you're fielding beta software. You should be fired.

Re:I've already upgraded..

[click2005]

With that exception, what "Feature" is missing from Office 2003 that I need so desperately

Lots of features...

1. Bloatware 3.5 - Much bloatier and slower than previous attempts to pad out software.
2. Reorganisation - MS has rearranged all the menus in the software for all those people who do nothing at work. Now they can say they're looking for a wicked new feature that will increase productivity by almost 4%.
3. Greater Value - With Office 2007 you get much more nothingness than ever before. This means even though we're gouging users more than ever, they still get more nothingness per dollar.
4. Buried Treasure - If you look through all the menus, find the 'GooglyMoogly' option and enabl it, Office 2007 will now guide you to any nearby buried treasure. The "keep up with the Joneses" Indiana Jones option is only available in the Enterprise Edition.
5. Chuck Norris - Office 2007 can now stand its ground in a fight against the bearded man himself.

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't regret that you did!

MOD PARENT UNDERRATED

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll be awfully glad that you did!

MOD PARENT INTERESTING

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll thank yourself down the road!

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot

[anagama]

Can I not use that same argument for not switching to Linux?

You could, but dude, your karma would take a beating around here.

Who are you kidding? Slashdot has become an MS apologists' haven.

Clarity comes from persective. It's no win for M$

[twitter]

So Microsoft's old menus were shit, so they should have changed them, but they shouldn't have changed them because they should have got them right first time because change is bad.

That's about right, when you consider the historical context. Let me modify your words so that they make sense.

So Microsoft's old menus were shit, so they should have changed them [to be able to compete with other better word processors], but they [did not, preferring to use their platform advantage to quash those competitors.] [Now that they have done that and forced so many people to memorize their awful shit, they should stick to it. The problem is a competitor that's pulled the same nasty trick: dumping their product at no cost, except the product in this case is a duplicate. Ha ha, M$ can't insult the product without degrading themselves so they are forced to change and differentiate themselves. Overall, non of this should have happened. They should have competed fairly in the first place, changing till they had a winner or quit. What they have done is the worst possible thing. They forced an inferior product on everyone and are now forcing massive changes in how all those people do their work. The jury is out on the benefit of those changes but, they .] shouldn't have changed them because they should have got them right first time because change is bad.

There, does that make things clear to you? It's a no win situation for M$ because you never really win when you fuck people over.

... you haven't used an MS product in 7 years, so how would you even know? At least I had the decency to use OpenOffice before I deleted it.

It has only been five years since I was forced to use Word as part of my job. Since then, I've been lucky enough not to work for such stupid employers. I am forced to use a W2K box every day for data capture and can say it's a real piece of shit. My brief brushes with XP only convince me that M$ continues to insult users with heavy handed nonsense.

That does not, however, mean that I'm not surrounded by unhappy Word users and idiots who would force Word's quirks on me. The "Margin Lady" at LSU uses Word and so has "standardized" on her particular version's margins and styles. This has caused no end of headaches for people who chose Word to write their papers. OO in this case is preferable but Latex is the clear winner when it comes to crap like that. Typesetting of that type is what Word promisses but has yet to deliver in a machine independent way, someting competitors have done again and again all along. The biggest crime of it all is that it's a perfect waste of most people's time. Content is more important than form and a reasonable word processor has a good typographical form by default. Word is to word processing as MySpace is to web design.

Re:And that's one of the features.

[shaneh0]

Slashdot moderation speaks truths. The truth is that FOSS isn't good enough to stand on its own two feet. It needs shills to maintain balance by mod'ing down any negative comments about OSS and modding up any negative comments about the competition.

And even if it genuinely is good enough to hold its own weight, you'd never know that by reading slashdot.

When armies of props and shills try to shape discussions by editorializing it really makes you question why they feel they need to do that.

After all, if I had confidence that my product was better than yours, I'd want to have as much open, free, honest debate about our products as possible.

Re:Clarity comes from persective. It's no win for

[Macthorpe]

Too long. Didn't read.

Ah, childishness on the internet, may you never die.

As an afterthought, if you don't care about GP's opinion, why spew bile when he gives it to you?

If you didn't bother to read what I wrote, how do you know I don't care about his opinion, and why did you bother to respond?

Re:And that's one of the features.

[Master of Transhuman]

Like Windows doesn't need shills...

Hah! /. is FULL of Windows shills.

Microsoft pays astroturfers - and so-called "journalists" - to run around Linux sites saying, "Gee, I LOVE Linux...BUT..." every day.

My position remains unaffected:

Windows is CRAP.

Linux and OSS are ALSO CRAP.

But Linux and OSS are FREE CRAP.

Sorry Astroturf from Macthorp

[twitter]

I was waiting for the 'astroturfing' allegation. You can't actually have a discussion without getting that one in, can you? I work in the UK, and MS doesn't have an ISP over here. That pisses that little theory up the wall, doesn't it?

You are not a very good M$ defender, but you are one and a general pest. A brief review of your posting history shows you:

• Defending Big Brother's eyes in the world's most watched nation.
• Denying the existence of the M$ tax and trash talking free software.
• Loving the Windows key, which you use every day
• More love for M$, hater style. It's amazing how closely some people identity with a company like Microsoft.
• Defending the M$ patent on verb conjugation.
• Trash talking Firefox.
• Defending M$'s pathetic, "sorry I lost your email" answer to Exchange not working.
• General annoyance in defense of M$ morals.
• Defending M$ as they anti-compete others out of the anti-virus market their pathetic software has created.

I'm don't what you really do for a living, but I am sure that I can't trust anything you say. I'm not going to confuse what you say with popular sentiment. What I've see above is all designed to aggravate and annoy. If you don't see yourself that way, you need to look back at what you've written and ask yourself if you still believe any of it.

Sorry Astroturf from Macthorp

[twitter]

I was waiting for the 'astroturfing' allegation. You can't actually have a discussion without getting that one in, can you? I work in the UK, and MS doesn't have an ISP over here. That pisses that little theory up the wall, doesn't it?

You are not a very good M$ defender, but you are one and a general pest. A brief review of your posting history shows you:

• Defending Big Brother's eyes in the world's most watched nation. [slashdot.org]
• Denying the existence of the M$ tax and trash talking free software. [slashdot.org]
• Loving the Windows key, which you use every day [slashdot.org]
• More love for M$, hater style. [slashdot.org] It's amazing how closely some people identity with a company like Microsoft.
• Defending the M$ patent on verb conjugation. [slashdot.org]
• Trash talking Firefox. [slashdot.org]
• Defending M$'s pathetic, "sorry I lost your email" answer to Exchange not working. [slashdot.org]
• General annoyance in defense of M$ morals. [slashdot.org]
• Defending M$ as they anti-compete others out of the anti-virus market their pathetic software has created. [slashdot.org]

I'm don't know what you really do for a living, but I am sure that I can't trust anything you say.

No one should confuse what you say with popular sentiment. What I've see above is all designed to aggravate and annoy. Besides the obviously wrong opinions, you express yourself with phrases like, "You have no excuse," "needs a lobotomy," "terrible English, seriously immature, and really, really fucking stupid," and, my favorite, "finding entirely spurious evidence on the internet."