(no subject)

[arethinn]

Is there any compelling reason for me to shell out $90 to get copies of Office 2007 and Vista Business Edition (upgrade)? These are now available from my work's "Microsoft Campus Agreement" thingy. I don't particularly want to run Vista, but I suppose eventually there will be little choice. And I'm perfectly happy with Office 2003 and don't know what the design changes in 2007 amount to (I haven't ever seen it).

Comments

[lupagreenwolf.livejournal.com]

I *love* Office 2007, but I also use it for book layout, so a lot of the little bells and whistles in Word appeal to me.

[glitterychaos.livejournal.com]

Office 2007 is AWFUL. All the computers at school have it, and I absolutely hate it.

Its fully backwards compatible, so there's no real good reason to upgrade unless you like it better. Try to find a public terminal that has it and play around with it first (a computer/electronics store with machines set up, like Frys, would be a good place for this).

[netdancer.livejournal.com]

Microsoft has all but admitted that Vista blows. They're planning to retrofit the neatest of the Vista features into XP service packs...

[arethinn]

And what was that about a, like, GIGABYTE service pack for Vista they were going to release in January, I thought I heard?

[glitterychaos.livejournal.com]

Oh yea. And the layout/user-friendly features/appearance are entirely different. The keyboard shortcuts are the same, but the rest might as well be a different language. The changes between the two versions are huge.

To me at least. But yea, definitely take it for a test-drive before spending money on it.

Really, I don't think you'll ever *have* to get it, or vista. I ran win95 on my non-linux machines for years and years, up until 2005 I think, and it never posed a problem. I also used openoffice on the machines (Microsoft office wouldn't run at all on them) and never had a problem with that either. I only have XP now because the computer I have got purchased new and it came with XP home.

[helen99.livejournal.com]

Vista is very different from XP and Office 2007 is quite rearranged from the way it used to be (what glitterychaos said).

Since it's being offered cheaply, maybe you could buy it now and then when they stop supporting 2003 go ahead and load it. By that time they'll have patched Vista and its applications to the point where all the 'horrible' stuff will be ironed out. I have Vista on my new HP laptop. It's great for browsing, wireless, communications, graphics, and anything most people would want.

[valkyriur.livejournal.com]

What little I've worked with Vista just makes me frustrated. It's difficult to do much with it.

My mom uses Office 2007 and there's lots of things she uses for her office work that she loves.

[winterredwood.livejournal.com]

Office 2007 makes me want to scream. It is very different from previous versions and I've been having a difficult time in the past month trying to learn it. It isn't user-friendly at all. Unfortunately my computer came with it pre-installed so I'm stuck with it. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It's a mess.

Vista isn't much better, though it's workable. It still has compatibility issues with some programs, though I suppose eventually the kinks will be worked out. I would wait to upgrade until Microsoft releases updates.

[baxil.livejournal.com]

I'm working tech support at an ISP, and I really haven't heard anything good about Vista yet.

At my other job, we tried to install Office 2007 on one machine, and realized that that broke our ability to pass files around the network: Word 2007 uses by default the ".docx" format, which is completely different (and incompatible) with the .docs from all previous versions of Word. IIRC same with the other apps.

Like plague, comma, avoid.

Yes, maybe someday they will be better, but considering the price of pulling a used (but licensed and usable) copy from eBay, it's not worth making the investment now on the off chance you'll save money later.

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

any compusa/best buy/circuit city/etc in your area probably has demo models set up...taking a look might not be a bad idea.