M
mmullen
I understand that many people have been complaining about the ribbon
interface, many have defended it, and a whole lot of people stuck in the
middle.
I've been using Office 2007 for just under 2 years (2 years in December) and
just wanted to post my opinions of the Student and Teacher suite. I
apologize ahead of time if anyone takes any of my comments rude.
The good (in a nut shell):
Not much has really changed between this version and 2003. Somethings were
easier to work with (tables in particular), but the rest is mostly for eye
candy. New transitions (all of which are not really needed/wanted in school
presentations) looked nice.
Startup time was amazing (very rarely slower than 2000, 2002, and 2003
startup times) for every program other than Excel - Excel always seemed to
take its sweet time loading.
I loved the ability to see new addons on a whim. Some of them I knew were
present, others I had no idea until this version made me go back and find
them in older versions.
Now the bad:
The ribbon interface forces me to take longer to complete my tasks,
especially while preparing reports that require alot of tables, figures, and
equations. The want of Word to continuously return to its annoying
double-spaced, New Times Roman, size 12 font - no matter what I did, what
settings I choose, it would not listen.
The quick bar doesn't help me that much. In Office 2003 and 2000, I had a
total of 44 selections on my main bar to handle everything I needed. The
quick bar seems to only let me add roughly 18 at anytime, while removing
selections (especially figure selections) when I moved away from the figure.
I've never been able to get a count on how many I could have at anytime.
I have tried a few 3rd party applications to change it to original menus,
however the problem I then ran into is the change in shortcuts. I'm still
having issues with keyboard shortcuts.
And now the kicker: why does the ribbon interface take up so much space on
the screen? Run Word 2007 on a netbook - even with the ribbon minimized, as
soon as the ribbon shows on the screen you can't see more than a third of
your document. I had no problems with previous versions of Office on my
netbook.
I see why new users love the interface, but at the same time it is and has
been a frustrating experience. At many times I have reverted back to Office
2003 to complete a homework assignment since it took forever to adjust image
properties. There were also times I reverted to OpenOffice.org just to get
work done, especially with Excel. PowerPoint turned into a waste of time and
money - Apple's iWork Keynote took care of everything for presenting (I'm
running a Macbook Pro with OS X and Windows 7 Full right now) with a much
better design interface and better support for older ppt files, while
OpenOffice.org handled taking notes from presentations my professors have
given us.
The only saving grace has been OneNote. Thank god it uses the older
interface. I love OneNote to death, and wouldn't know what to do if the
Ribbon interface is crammed into it.
My school has switched entirely to Office 2007 now (every computer has it),
but it just slows me down too much. I'm now carrying around an external HDD
with the portable versions of OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Chrome, and a
sandboxed version of Office 2003 Professional so I can work on assignments on
campus.
I never expected to waste my time and money over the last nearly two years
due to a crummy interface.
If anyone from the Office 2010 GUI design team sees this message, would you
please do more to improve the interface. I liked the ribbon is some ways,
but it was disorganized and took up way too much space on the screen. I've
seen some images from the design of 2010 and like where it is heading -
hopefully I can get in the beta and see if it has gotten better.
Otherwise, maybe I'll leave M$ products alone for a bit. I've already
replaced M$ Paint with an older version in Windows 7 (gotta love MSDN
Alliance) as the ribbon interface was annoying with it.
interface, many have defended it, and a whole lot of people stuck in the
middle.
I've been using Office 2007 for just under 2 years (2 years in December) and
just wanted to post my opinions of the Student and Teacher suite. I
apologize ahead of time if anyone takes any of my comments rude.
The good (in a nut shell):
Not much has really changed between this version and 2003. Somethings were
easier to work with (tables in particular), but the rest is mostly for eye
candy. New transitions (all of which are not really needed/wanted in school
presentations) looked nice.
Startup time was amazing (very rarely slower than 2000, 2002, and 2003
startup times) for every program other than Excel - Excel always seemed to
take its sweet time loading.
I loved the ability to see new addons on a whim. Some of them I knew were
present, others I had no idea until this version made me go back and find
them in older versions.
Now the bad:
The ribbon interface forces me to take longer to complete my tasks,
especially while preparing reports that require alot of tables, figures, and
equations. The want of Word to continuously return to its annoying
double-spaced, New Times Roman, size 12 font - no matter what I did, what
settings I choose, it would not listen.
The quick bar doesn't help me that much. In Office 2003 and 2000, I had a
total of 44 selections on my main bar to handle everything I needed. The
quick bar seems to only let me add roughly 18 at anytime, while removing
selections (especially figure selections) when I moved away from the figure.
I've never been able to get a count on how many I could have at anytime.
I have tried a few 3rd party applications to change it to original menus,
however the problem I then ran into is the change in shortcuts. I'm still
having issues with keyboard shortcuts.
And now the kicker: why does the ribbon interface take up so much space on
the screen? Run Word 2007 on a netbook - even with the ribbon minimized, as
soon as the ribbon shows on the screen you can't see more than a third of
your document. I had no problems with previous versions of Office on my
netbook.
I see why new users love the interface, but at the same time it is and has
been a frustrating experience. At many times I have reverted back to Office
2003 to complete a homework assignment since it took forever to adjust image
properties. There were also times I reverted to OpenOffice.org just to get
work done, especially with Excel. PowerPoint turned into a waste of time and
money - Apple's iWork Keynote took care of everything for presenting (I'm
running a Macbook Pro with OS X and Windows 7 Full right now) with a much
better design interface and better support for older ppt files, while
OpenOffice.org handled taking notes from presentations my professors have
given us.
The only saving grace has been OneNote. Thank god it uses the older
interface. I love OneNote to death, and wouldn't know what to do if the
Ribbon interface is crammed into it.
My school has switched entirely to Office 2007 now (every computer has it),
but it just slows me down too much. I'm now carrying around an external HDD
with the portable versions of OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Chrome, and a
sandboxed version of Office 2003 Professional so I can work on assignments on
campus.
I never expected to waste my time and money over the last nearly two years
due to a crummy interface.
If anyone from the Office 2010 GUI design team sees this message, would you
please do more to improve the interface. I liked the ribbon is some ways,
but it was disorganized and took up way too much space on the screen. I've
seen some images from the design of 2010 and like where it is heading -
hopefully I can get in the beta and see if it has gotten better.
Otherwise, maybe I'll leave M$ products alone for a bit. I've already
replaced M$ Paint with an older version in Windows 7 (gotta love MSDN
Alliance) as the ribbon interface was annoying with it.