The UI out apples Apple.

But for once despite the glamour there is a few decent improvements under the hood. Even the security is a bit easier to live with than 2003.
And blow me down, I got a freebie from MS that lets me output docs and even PPTs as PDFs. And getting decent looking jpegs out of PPT slides was very simple.

If it wasn't for that damn ribbon I'd be very happy. Maybe I can grow to love the ribbon, you can grow your own.

Bob.

my dad used the demo of Office '07 for a month. Absolutely loved it vs the previous versions but didn't en up buying it (he finely got his old key # from MS).

But please describe "the ribben" for those who don't know what you're talking about. I use open Office.org

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA100898951033.aspx#3

oh. that.

every person I know who's used Office 07 said that was the BEST part about office & was the biggest improvement for them.

I wasn't find of it. Honestly, I'd perfer Vegas to eliminate the menu up top & do it like maya: hit a hot key & the menu appears where your mouse is pointing so you never need to move far. A 3D kids game I have puts the menu directly in front of the player in the 3d world when the menu key is hit. That's very useful!

Unbelievable ... there's an active script in that page that prevents it from being shown if you don't have Office 2007 installed. So, i guess i don't get to see it.

I actually like the ribbon in Office 2k7. All over, Office 2k7 is way better than its predecessors. being able to insert pictures with rounded edges or at angles was worth it to me. Dont know if ribbons would help in video editing but it would be nice to compress some menus down to the top bar sometimes.

The "ribbon" is the lamest UI "improvement" ever conceived. But AOL users should love it since Microsoft seems to be headed to the lowest common denominator of user levels.

I have been using Vista for six weeks - explanations later. But I can agree with John Meyer on this issue - there is not a single positive feature of Vista that compels an "upgrade". Not one.

The biggest reason I''ve found for Vista is it's improve memory management. I've had XP x86 and x64 come to an eventual crawl if not rebooted every few days after heavy use.

No slouch of a PC either - Dual 3.2 Xeons, 4gb RAM, primary hard drive is a 150gb 15k SATA with 2 300gb 15k SCSI drives. A EMU 1820M Sound Card and a 8800GTS vid card.

Unbelievable ... there's an active script in that page that prevents it from being shown if you don't have Office 2007 installed. So, i guess i don't get to see it.

Remove the "#3" from the link. That's how I viewed it.

Mscheidell:

There must be something wrong with your XP setup. I've kept mine on 24/7 for many weeks at a time with tons on processes running in the background. No issues even with 512MB (now 1GB).

As I've mentioned recently in another thread, we bought some great Toshiba Celeron laptops in the past few weeks and after ripping out the dog-slow Vista Home and replacing it with XPpro they run like champs. Really sweet machines. I notice OfficeDepot is running another special--this time the same machine is just $429 but without printer. I seriously thing we'll be getting another one and "modifying" it the same way. I can see why Toshiba is unloading these machines--under Vista they are practically unworkable.

when MS was devising Office 2007, they sat down with a number of test groups, to ask what users wanted in the new version. Turned out 90% of the features already existed in Office, but the users had no clue.
Was a big shakeup - make the apps more user friendly, easier to find out about tools etc.
Thus the ribbon. Follows the logic of Photoshop etc, so not exactly without succesful precedent.

ITO features in successive versions of Office, there have been definite improvements since 97, particulary in terms of PowerPoint (big overhaul, esp in animation & formatting), Excel security and workgroup features, and Word's ease of formatting (think styles).

that said, I use 2003. Not sufficient need for me to move to 2007. office xp/2002 would prob be enough.

as usual, depends on what you use the tools for

:)

I think the basic situation we all have to accept is this:

Software companies cannot continue to exist forever on the product they created last year or the year before that .... but we want them to continue to exist and improve/develop their product, so our part of this deal is to buy upgrades.

We can but hope that in their search for new sellable features, they don't make the mistake of adding complicated extras that no-one wants.

So far, I think that Sonic Foundry, and now Sony, have done very well in this respect. Not so sure about Microsoft though .....

>But I can agree with John Meyer on this issue - there is not a single positive feature of Vista that compels an "upgrade". Not one.

You didn't get the memo from the movie industry about propagating involuntary compliance among their potential customers?

Surely that is the single big feature you are missing in Vista. I think they worked hard to add that kind of stuff. A big task; hard to add much user stuff too. But, think of the things they can limit in the future with this new technology. Pretty soon we can get this internet sharing of incompatible ideas under control, as a side benefit to controlling the horrendous theft of movies.

Kiddie porn, terrorism, political extremism... all bad things. Pretty much solved on the internet or just within misused computers after proper OS involvement watchdog alerts are put in place. It's a new horizon, a... brave new Vista.

Not since the last stages of the reappropriation of the social security number to just tag the populace have we had such a major step to get the random riff-raff under control. We've been bought and sold.

I personally am not rushing into anything. Look where our society's informed thinking about the best action has gotten us lately. Try as I might, I can't believe we are on a winning streak. So, I think I'll just sit back, slowly watch, and place side bets.

Win 2K is pretty good and XP doesn't suck too bad yet, but I'm not on auto update. Apple? Dunno. Deal with them later. Unix/Linux may be banned soon or regulated in some way.