Well I know a lot of people have an irrational hatred of Microsoft, or at least their newer products, such as Office 2007 and Vista. Well, here I am, preparing myself to launch into the defence of Office 2007.
I have used Office 2007 ever since it came out, as I got it in a free upgrade from 2003 edition (ok, it wasn’t quite free, it was $27, but that’s near enough to free…). Personally, I love everything about it. The first thing you notice is that it all has pretty colourful new icons. Then once you have opened up, you notice the major change in 2007: the “Fluent User Interface”, including the ribbon. While it takes a little bit of getting used to (not too much fortunately), you will soon be working faster and more efficiently than ever. It makes it a lot easier to apply formatting, layout, etc. all changes, and it allows you to discover new commands and features that were previously buried away in menus. Admittedly it isn’t quite perfect, it would be nice to have some form of customisation in the ribbon, but it usually shows the most relevant commands. Now if you have any interest in Office 2007, you have undoubtedly already read a lot of detailed information, so I will not go about it in too much depth.
Although most ‘new’ features are actually just undiscovered features from older versions, there are some features that are genuinely new. I can’t remember all of them, but two really useful features that I use a lot is the ability to write blog posts directly in Word, and Outlook RSS reading. So basically instead of using a clunky web-based interface, I can write blog posts in word at superspeed, and then publish them in one click, no stress. In Outlook, I can subscribe to blogs, news, and other info and have it automatically deliver these straight to my computer- no manual checking required. Very useful, both of them.
I must wrap it up there, not just because it’s getting long again, but because I am about to go out. Anyway, enjoy, and look into Office 2007. It is very good.
