Journal
Office 2007 Beta
29 May 2006 › 12 comments
Forgive the blatant reference to The Buggles. I feel that it’s a fitting tribute to the demise of Times New Roman as the default font for Microsoft Word, which was replaced by the new kid on the block, a sans-serif font named Calibri. In fact, this font looks to be the default for the entire MS Office suite. In case you haven’t heard the news, Office 2007 Beta 2 is available for public testing.
While free, it comes at a price. Be advised, when you install the beta, by default it replaces the previous version. If you want to run it separately, be sure to choose that option instead. It will also reclaim all file associations such as .doc, .ppt and .xls. If you can live with that sort of thing, and are the more adventurous type, then you might consider giving it a test drive.
I have been playing around with the “big three” of Excel, Powerpoint and Word. I have mixed feelings about each of them, perhaps due to the starkness with which they have departed from the tried and true interface elements present throughout so many previous iterations of MS Office.
If you thought Office 2003 was shiny, wait until you see the fully bling’d out interface for 2007: Screenshot. It looks like a train wreck between IE7 and Hotmail. Thankfully, there is an option to switch to Vista Gray: Screenshot. Colors aside, this new interface could be a major step forward in usability.
In the case of Office 2003, there really was not a whole lot of improvement over Office XP. This was evident in the choice of advertising focus. Instead of featuring what was new and exciting, Microsoft berated previous customers, casting them as Dinosaurs who had failed to evolve to the next version. That was when I voted (withheld) my dollar and made the switch to OpenOffice.
With Office 2007 though, there have been some big changes. There appears to be quite a bit more visual continuity between the applications, centering around the MS Office logo, which also doubles as a button. Additionally, all the menus are now stored in tabbed format. I guess they learned their lesson in the Firefox vs. IE arena, and are now tabbing just about everything. Dubbed the “ribbon,” this interface takes some getting used to, but is pretty intuitive.
Additionally, you can finally save to PDF directly from any of the MS Office programs, without having to buy the pricey Adobe Acrobat software package. This has been a glaring shortcoming for quite some time now, especially considering it was already standard for the free alternative, OpenOffice.
From what I hear, the main market will most likely be enterprise level bulk purchases. The collaborative tools have been improved upon, making it better for an corporate environment as opposed to an individual user. So, do I think that you should run out and pre-order a copy? That really depends on what your business needs to accomplish with its office productivity software.
Personally, I hardly use any office products at all, aside from OpenOffice Writer at home for working on papers, and Microsoft Outlook at my day job. As far as email goes, I detest Outlook and prefer Gmail or Thunderbird. So, I will probably not bother with Office 2007, because Windows Vista will be too little, too late. Instead, I will soon be making the “switch” to a Macbook.
In a way, it is ironic that a good version of Microsoft Office is finally being developed, in conjunction with a lackluster operating system. I think this quote from John Gruber accurately sums up my feelings on the matter:
Microsoft is turning into a company that values management decisions that increase complexity over design decisions that increase clarity… This is how a company with so many talented programmers can spend six years developing an operating system that no one is excited about.
Discussion + Dissension
Comments closed after 2 weeks.
#1 David Barrett
Haha, looks liked I managed to convince you to go to the Macbook as opposed to the mini. :)
#2 Andrew Ingram
Microsoft is in a phase of trying out a range of new user interface ideas, computer programs have become stale in recent years with a lack of innovation beyond adding a few simple features. IE7, Vista and Office 2007 all have very different user interfaces, so far i’d say Office has the best followed by Vista.
I really hope people don’t view Office 2007 as something just for the business types, because it provides opportunities for home users to finally do things right. There is now a massive emphasis on document styles in word, meaning it’s a piece of cake to make properly structured documents. Even a computer illiterate parent should have no difficulty making a decent and readable document now.
In regards to the choice of theme, I think the Vista option in Office 2007 is hideous compared to the soft blue tones of the XP option. The black and grey vista shades have too much contrast and don’t match the icons or overall look well at all.
My experiences with this beta (which is fairly buggy) give me a lot of hope for the direction Microsoft is heading.
#3 Andrew Ingram
Aside: my flatmate has about 4 different versions of Office installed, including this beta. So it’s not really true that this beta replaces your previous version.
#4 franky
The perfect ‘monopoly move’.
Tke beta license expires February 1st 2007. Any backwards compatibility with older versions provided by Microsoft?
Andrew, always remember 99% of the users chose the default installation. ;)
#5 Nathan Smith
Andrew: Thanks for pointing out the possibility of simultaneous installations. I have not had MS Office installed in awhile, so I was going by what I had been hearing from others. I have changed the article accordingly. I agree that Microsoft is improving things with Office 2007. I just think that in the case of Vista, it’s not anything we haven’t already seen in OSX: More on that here.
#6 Jonathan Eckmier
“Additionally, you can finally save to PDF directly from any of the MS Office programs, without having to buy the pricey Adobe Acrobat software package.”
... and there was much rejoicing.
#7 Andrew Ingram
I’ve always used CutePDF for that, one faux printer device and I can save to PDF from any application, regardless of support for pdf. Of course, I appreciate that native support for pdf within an application is better, but there’s never been any difficulty saving to pdf from Office.
#8 Sally Nordh
Thank you for the template, Nathan. I am using it in a hospital training program and having the template has allowed me more time to spend with the new nurses. Thanks again! Best wishes as you complete your MDiv!
#9 Nathan Smith
Sally: I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you’re welcome nonetheless. I would email you to get clarification, but you didn’t leave a real email address, so that’s right out. Anyway, I’m glad that one of my templates helped you, though I’m not sure why you commented on this article instead of just sending an email.
#10 Sean
Somewhat off topic but I just wanted to say that I just made the change from windows to OS X. I just purchased a macbook and I love it. I am excited to see what you will think about it. And if you need Windows just install Parallels Desktop. It is nice and fast and cheap.
Now I just need to spend some time digging into the depths of OS X to master it.
#11 Nathan Smith
Sean: That’s cool. I just placed an order for a Macbook a few days ago. It hasn’t arrived yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I have wanted an Apple laptop for some time now, but couldn’t justify shelling out all that money just for a G4, knowing the new Intel Core Duo was right around the corner.
#12 arnel jordan
it is the best web id ever seen befor…. it is simple but rock