SillyDog701

[Antony]

News from BetaNews, Microsoft said it had released the Office 2007 code to manufacturing. The company is still on track to release the new Office to businesses November 30, with general availability in early 2007.

"The 2007 Microsoft Office system RTM completes the most significant improvements to the products in more than a decade," Microsoft Business president Jeff Raikes said. "It's rewarding to be able to send this release off to our customers and help them take the next big leap forward in productivity."

Downloadable product trials would begin on December 1, which are an expansion of the current Test Drive program. At the end of the trial, users would have the option to buy or upgrade to the 2007 release. Additionally, Microsoft will provide migration tools and converters to ease the transition for businesses and consumers.

For more detail, please read Office 2007 Goes Gold (BetaNews)

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[DJGM]

My advice to anyone using Office 2003 ... don't bother upgrading to Office 2007. Like IE7, the GUI is an absolute mess.

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[Antony]

My advice to anyone using Office 2003 ... don't bother upgrading to Office 2007. Like IE7, the GUI is an absolute mess.

Any other better reasons people should stay with 2003 besides the UI? I believe Microsoft has something else to sell Office 2007 besides the new user interface that you happened not liking it.

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[DJGM]

There was absolutely no need whatsoever to scrap a perfectly good GUI based on standard elements
for a brand new UI that's nothing more than a totally confusing mess. If it isn't broke, don't fix it.
Anyone that actually goes ahead buys Microsoft Office 2007 has got more money than sense.

Take a look at these screengrabs from winsupersite.com and you'll see what I mean.

Microsoft Word 2007
Microsoft Excel 2007
Microsoft PowerPoint 2007

Absolutely bloody awful! These screengrabs are darn good advert for - OpenOffice! And I'm sure a
similar set of GUI layouts could be coming into the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac OS X.
Goodness knows how many Apple Human Interface Guidelines are likely to be contravened!

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[Antony]

Anyone that actually goes ahead buys Microsoft Office 2007 has got more money than sense.

When Office 2007 is out, Microsoft will pull Office 2003 of the shelves. It's not possible to buy older version of Office (through the normal ways).

We don't encourage pirating software.

You are still focus on the user interface. Are there any other reasons people should not upgrade to Office 2007?

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[Mandrake]

Superb! I've been using Office 2007 Beta 2 TR for months now. I'm much more productive in both Word and Excel than I ever was in Office 2003. The only complaint I have is that I had major performance problems with Outlook 2007 and had to rollback to Outlook 2003. That being said, it is a beta - and I look forward to seeing how well the final version runs. I'll certainly download the trial once it's available.

The reason for the "ribbon" replacing the old office 2003 type UI is simple. Every Office release people would ask Microsoft to add these new features to Office. The problem was, 9 out of 10 of those requested were already in Office. So instead of piling on the new features that no one will ever find, they re-designed the UI - adding the ribbon that's meant to make it a lot easier to find and make use of the all the features in office that were deeply hidden away in Office 2003 and earlier releases. Paul Thurrot has lots of informative articles on Office 2007, the ribbon and the new features in Office 2007 at the SuperSite for Windows. I believe his final review is forthcoming.

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[Pu7o]

Presenting Microsoft Office Word 2007.

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[Antony]

ThinkFree CEO Kang Tae-Jin thinks that "We think a lot of Microsoft users will find the new Office 2007 interface very difficult.... A lot of users will get turned off by this."

The MacObserver reports.

ThinkFree's main product is ThinkFree Office, a Java based productivity suite that is compatible with Microsoft Office.

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[Mandrake]

Well of course he's going to say something like that. He does want people to use his companies products.

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