Office 2007

[Spanky]

I finally uninstall Office 2007 beta since it will expire in another month. I am not impressed so far with its new layout of Excel. Most of the navigation is done by icons.

Have you used Office 2007? What is your impression? Is it worth upgrade?

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Nice features but the completely different user interface, while not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, will lead many corporations to significantly delay introduction as the retraining costs and time are ridiculous. They realllly should have had a switch to put it back to the original interface style to increase adoption rates.

Aside from that, unless you have need for any of the newer functions, most people can do fine on the older office products. Hell, i'm still using Office XP and Office 97 isnt that bad either.

 

[Goonie]

I was using Office 97 on my older machines, but on the newer ones I've switched to OpenOffice. It's free and does everything I could possibly need to do....including opening, working with, and saving MS Office files. And it takes up a LOT less room on the harddrive, so I have alot more room for importnat stuff....like pictures from my travels!!!

I'll invest my money in my FIRE, and not in Bill Gates bank accounts. But, hey, that's just me!

 

[TromboneAl]

I'm with Goonie. I've been using OpenOffice Calc for a while and am very happy with it.

If my Microsoft Word 2000 doesn't behave itself, I'll replace it too.

 

[Spanky]

I will stick with Office 2003 since it has all the features that I need.

 

[samclem]

I like Open Office, too. Works just great, I don't think I'll be buyng another Office suite from Bill. Next step: Going with Linux instead of Windows (I don't think I'm ready for that yet).

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

I like OpenOffice, too, but I really want to use the macros for their spreadsheet. It is incompatible with Excel.

Does anyone know where to find out about this?

Thnx.

ed

 

[Goonie]

I like Open Office, too. Works just great, I don't think I'll be buyng another Office suite from Bill. Next step: Going with Linux instead of Windows (I don't think I'm ready for that yet).

I've toyed with Linux in the past....and after FIRE that may be my future! It was fun to tinker with and learn, and it met my needs. Now that the old 'puter that was running Windows 2000 took a dump (actually the 'puter didn't...Win2000 did) I'm going to make that the new Linux box (Mandriva, formerly Mandrake). Sorry, Bill....NOT!!!

 

[donheff]

I like OpenOffice, too, but I really want to use the macros for their spreadsheet. It is incompatible with Excel.

Does anyone know where to find out about this?

Thnx.

ed

As I understand it, OO's spreadsheet can handle most - but not all - Excel macros. Pull up a complicated spreadsheet from Excel, load it into OO and give it a try.

 

[donheff]

I like Open Office, too. Works just great, I don't think I'll be buyng another Office suite from Bill. Next step: Going with Linux instead of Windows (I don't think I'm ready for that yet).

SamClem: Linux is actually pretty easy to use. The nice thing is you can load it on a somewhat older PC and do just fine. I primarily use Linux for servers which is a different thing but I did put the desktop version of Ubuntu Linux on one machine to see how it feels and it is pretty nice. If all you want to do is Web and Office like applications, maybe some photo editing, etc you will do fine on Linux. If you like games or the latest PDA or other cool device you will have problems.

If you have an old PC to fool around with, download an Ubuntu CD and give it a try. Alternatively, there are several desktop distributions that will boot from a CD (I think Ubuntu has one of these). With one of those you can play around in the Linux environment on your regular Windows desktop without damaging anything.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I tried open office a couple of years ago and found it surprisingly good but as noted, some complex macros dont work. If you're using 'notepad' to compose letters and the back of an old envelope to do your calculations, its quite a bargain...the cost of a free download.

Linux can be a great way to squeeze some mileage out of an older machine although a full distribution is probably not going to run any faster than windows 95 or 98, so if you already have that loaded on the older machine unless you're up for some tech tinkering I dont think the average joe that wants to browse, read email and run Office apps is going to benefit much.

Biggest problem with most linux distros is obtaining drivers for some devices. There arent linux drivers for some more obscure devices and even some relatively mainstream network and video drivers lack good (or any) linux support. Of particular issue are laptops, which often have poor support in the way of full sets of linux drivers. In any case, you will at a minimum have to find and separately download many of these and install them yourself, as unlike XP/vista, driver support onboard the cd/dvd is limited.

Linux ISO boot disks are a great way to try the stuff out, particularly on a mainstream desktop machine with nothing 'odd' in it. You download and burn the ISO to a cd or dvd and boot up on it...tinker and play...you cant really hurt anything as long as you stay away from your main hard drive and the OS already installed on it.

Best part it, there are also plenty of these available for free download.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

My intel-based Mac does unix, Mac OS, and Windows (quite briskly using a program called Parallels). I have dabbled quite a bit in all three compartments.

When a solution (WP, spreadsheet, web, video etc.) is available for the MacOS, that is almost always my preference. The rate of errors, bugs, interface idiocy, viruses, instability seem consistently more favorable on that Unix-based platform.

At this point, I use Windows rarely, such as when a site works only with IE (a less and less common occurrence). MS Office is available, but better solutions exist in most cases, for me.

 

[Goonie]

(mildly off topic....but... : )

there are several desktop distributions that will boot from a CD (I think Ubuntu has one of these).

Mandriva (formerly Mandrake Linux), and Knoppix both have free, downloadable ISO's of bootable versions that you can burn to a CD and use, without needing to install it, OR needing to alter your current computer or operating system.

I've played with the Knoppix, but have not yet downloaded the Mandriva. Though I have used Mandrake v.10, in the past, and it was pretty easy to use.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

The way to run Linux is the same way I ran OS/2 long ago: Put together the machine using only supported hardware. There are lists of such hardware.

 

[Marshac]

I have Vista and Office 2k7 at work- For the most part, I like Vista, and am slowly warming up to Office 2007. The 'ribbon' is very different than the previous UI, and finding some menu items has proven difficult.... i'm learning, and it's getting better. Microsoft should have made it so that you can switch between the old menu, and the new ribbon.... there is now a ton of obsolete training material out there.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Might be something good to invest in...companies that develop and give training for microsoft desktop products...in a couple of years when it hits implementation stride.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

You can also do this:

http://docs.google.com/

Let google worry about it. I'm already using their mail and calendar and i've dropped outlook altogether. Its not as full featured/optioned and lacks a few things that outlook has, but I dont miss the huge code footprint on my machine and I can check my stuff from any machine on earth.

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

As I understand it, OO's spreadsheet can handle most - but not all - Excel macros. Pull up a complicated spreadsheet from Excel, load it into OO and give it a try.

don,

I did this once without success. Perhaps I did it wrong. I will try again, as this would be very handfy.

In any case, do you happen to know where I can find how to wirte OO's spreadsheet macros? I have a few programs I would like to write but not with Excel.

Thanks.

Ed

 

[donheff]

don,

I did this once without success. Perhaps I did it wrong. I will try again, as this would be very handfy.

In any case, do you happen to know where I can find how to wirte OO's spreadsheet macros? I have a few programs I would like to write but not with Excel.

Thanks.

Ed

I don't actually use them so I am no expert. A quick Google on the topic brought up a boatload of sites. The one I would try first is the apply named: OOMACROS.ORG

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

Thanks, Don!

I didn't find this page when I was looking a few years ago. It seems to be what I was looking for!

Ed

 

[Ed_The_Gypsy]

I found this little note in a forum from a link donheff provided:

If u have macros maded for excel it's almost impossible that they run in Calc, what u could do is remake the macros in the Calc language, and this is the harder than u can imagine!

Interesting. I kinda suspected that was the answer. Since I haved become resigned to doing everything from scratch, not a problem.

Cheers!

Ed