Microsoft Office 2007 (Standard Edition Upgrade) (PC)
£161.35
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Reduces Productivity, Slower then Previous Versions - If you are used to older versions of Office, then do yourself a favour, and stick with them. Do not upgrade to this. The following issues are apparent elsewhere on the internet so are common issues...1) The new user interface is a real pain. Instead of having all the options and settings available to you in the tool bar and drop down menus, MS have removed the menu and categorised the options and settings in different panes. This makes it much harder to find what you usually can get to in one or two clicks. I sometimes spend ages trying to find options and settings I need. Its a ridiculous step back. 2) Having two or more Word documents open causes a pause when switching between the two. This becomes really painful when you are switching often (such as copying and pasting from one to another). 3) Outlook insists in updating cached messages everytime I switch to my IMAP folders, I have to wait for 5 minutes while Outlook processes messages. Outlook also hangs while it is fetching new messages, so if you are in the middle of reading old mail, or writing new mail, you have to just stop what you are doing and wait until it finished before you can carry on. The more messages the longer. I have over 6000 in an IMAP folder, it takes about 5 minutes before I can use Outlook again. The above 3 problems are the most frustrating things I have come across in any Microsoft software to date, and these were not apparent in older versions. I wish I did not upgrade. As a result Office 2007 reduces productivity.
OK - If you can get into the packaging! - I ve been in IT for over 30 years, many of them using MS products. I have an IQ of around 140. It took me five minutes to get into the stupid, fiddly plastic packaging. Absolutely appalling design - unless it was designed as a MENSA puzzle!Then I tried to activate the full key having been using a 60 day free trial key. That in itself is an adventure. The instructions provided were useless. The instructions on the internet were useless but I got there in the end.The product itself is fine and great value but they don t half make you work for it. 0/10 for packaging, 0/10 for activation instructions, 8/10 for the product.
There s no point fixing something that ain t broken! - I don t enjoy using Office 2007. Millions of people around the world got use to the original Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc. and then they decided to change the layout of everything.After a while, you end up getting use to it and I quite like the way you switch from one tab to the next on Word. In other words, I quite like the way you switch from file, edit, view... (although it s now called Home, Insert, Page layout...).There are little things though, which are really annoying. First, I don t like the fact that there are no permanent margins around the page on Word - it makes it harder to quickly adjust the layout of headings etc. I can t stand the way it automatically double spaces, every time you press enter. Sometimes you don t want it to do that - it is difficult to change this.Finally, I don t like the way it saves every file in the .docx format. You can change this to .doc and it will save all your work fine - so why bother even introducing .docx in the first place? It just means that if you forget to change the format to .doc when you save documents at work/university - you can t open the file at home unless you have already purchased Office 2007 on your PC at home.
It Wasn t Broken - It Is Now! - If you have Office 2003 (unlike me!) then avoid upgrading to this this ridiculous product. It provides nothing that you couldn t do, often more easily, with the old menus and toolbars of Office 2003.On offer is the prominent ribbon interface that provides quick access to many features that in all reality will be fairly redundant for many users. In Word, any takers for Styles, Symbols, Themes, Citations & Bibliography, Captions, Table of Authorities? Thought not!Conversely, many commonly used features are less accessible than before.However, many of the old dialogue boxes are still lurking beneath the surface, which just goes to show that ugliness too can be only skin deep.