Topic: Office Professional 2007 BETA

[Steve]

Is anyone else testing this?

[jkim]

Yeah, I downloaded it this week.  So far, I'm not too fond of the changes they made.  It might just be something you need to get used to but making everything "user friendly" has left me a little confused.

[Steve]

I downloaded it last week also im just now installing it. I'm more excited about Vista Beta 2, downloading that now.

[jkim]

Does that thing have a release date yet?  I don't really feel like trying out Vista...

[Steve]

Not sure, i didnt even know about it (vista) till the other day. I dont read alot of software news and what not lol. I'm interested to try it for myself while its in development before it spreads. Ok, im lying, i love having things my tech head friends dont lol.

As for office, i dont have anything to type up tonight but it looks a little.....messy. Going to take a bit getting used to thats for sure.

[ober]

Vista is due out sometime in 2007.  They keep pushing it back.  There's going to be 6... yes SIX different releases.

If Office 2007 is anything like that POS IE7 beta 2, I have no interest whatsoever.

[Steve]

Vista is 5 versions. I thought she was talking about office. I havent used IE7 yet since vista wont be installed till this afternoon (gotta do some backups and whip out PM), but heres a SS of office and excel for ya obie. Its full screen so ill just link it.

http://www.titansgaming.com/images/offpro7b.JPG

[kermi3]

Vista: home basic, home premium, enterprise, business, and ultimate

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000829&pageNumber=12

Basically, any of us is going want ultimate.  Ridiculous.


btw, that's a really good article about the drawbacks of vista.  I'm particularly not happy about the "protect you from yourself" security, increased layers to navigate for networking, and the movement of the display settings so they are slightly less accessable...oh, and the removal of the toolbar (including "File, Edit, etc" from the top of folders and IE7 is absolutely asinine.  Thank you for changing the control interface that we've all used for a decade and a half to make sure that I don't click the wrong thing and hurt myself.  Insane.

[Steve]

It is a good article but i think im going to disagree with him on alot of it. I think they made the USC very cumbersome on purpose. They want the BT's to start from the shitty end and work their way back to find a happy medium to release the full public version on. As for the networking interface, other than loosing the right click + prop ability i think it will be a nice improvement.

We'll see, everyone has his own opinions. Like i said, i HATED XP when it was in BETA, i upgraded to it and almost went back to 2000. Now i love it. How much do just plain MSDN subscriptions cost? I would like to be an official Vista BT and the best way to do that seems to be getting a msdn subscription.

[ober]

I see no reason to get anything above the "Business version".  And I swear I read an article just the other day that had 6 versions instead of 5.

[Steve]

Nope just 5, may have been an older article u know how they love to change things. If i was going to purchase it i wouldnt go above business because it isnt going to be worth the cost. Otherwise, gotta take my o/s like my nachos, ultimate!

Was that the layout you were referring to, ober?

[ober]

Yeah.

[hans]

Looks different for sure. Is it still posible to make it look like the "old" version or minimal UI? I think the big ribbon looks clunky for a power user. I'll probably try and download it to at least take a look but I'm pretty happy with OpenOffice.

[Steve]

if u can i cant figure out how. I just spent 5 minutes looking for it. See in the new IE, which looks alot like mozilla imo, u can click the gear and go back to classic...

[kermi3]

Microsoft isn't targetting the power users.  They're targetting our parents; yes even yours Rob.

I think I might like the DVD writing and media center functionality of Ultimate.  I have Nero now, but I haven't been very happy with it...maybe there's a patch out...