Microsoft isn't exactly my favorite company out there for a lot of good reasons. Of all the things I don't like about the company, however, the one product that I've always been pretty satisfied with was their Office software. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't always been all that great and has pretty much always been a memory hog forcing many to upgrade their computers. I've used other complete-office products, however, and overall I haven't been as satisfied with them as I have been with MS Office. Perhaps I've just gotten so used to MS Office products that all others seem cheap and foreign (which I'm sure Microsoft would love to hear) but I do believe that MS Office is one of those products where consumers should look past the "evil empire" stigma that surrounds it (even if it might partially deserve that reputation). All this being said, I've had a decent amount of time to toodle around with Office 2007 and figured it was about time for a review.
To start with, Office 2007 feels much different than its 2003 predecessor and in a very positive way. The new Ribbon system present in all Office 2007 programs but Outlook is a very different style of UI, but also a very welcome change. Mac owners have been able to reap the benefits of the Ribbon concept since Office 2004 came out for the Mac OS. The UI transition was relatively easy for me because I've been using Office Mac 2004 since... well since 2004 or so. For those used to any and all previous MS Office products, 2007 will seem a bit foreign but the ribbon system is a far superior interface than just the standard dropdown menus standard in the previous iterations of the program. It has been my experience that MS generally does a much better job with Office Mac than it does with the Office that is designed to work with MS's own operating system. Keeping this in mind I'm really glad they expanded on the Ribbon concepts they introduced for the Mac when developing Office 2007 for Windows.
Aside from the improved interface, users running Vista will find that there's a much better integration of Office and Vista than users running Windows XP. I don't have much personal experience with this since my work computer that has Office 2007 is running XP, but I've been able to play around a bit with Office 2007 on a Vista machine and it really starts to feel like an extension of the OS, at least until you notice how much more RAM it's taking to run. Overall my experience with Office 2007 has been a pretty positive one. Perhaps the biggest change aside from an updated UI is the new file structure. All Office 2007 products have stepped away from their old file-types and are now all based on XML, with the file-type displaying as '.xls'. While this severely limits forward-compatibility from earlier versions of Office the benefits are great. You can still work on older file-formats and still save in those formats. When opening a .doc file for example, Word will open up in Compatibility Mode and save the file as a .doc file by default in case you need to pass it on to a user that has a previous version of Office installed. Also, remember how PowerPoint presentations could easily get to 500mb or 1gb? Yeah that's pretty much gone. The XML format incorporates pictures and effects much more efficiently which really helps file size to be much more reasonable. Distributing and archiving lengthy PowerPoint presentations (like from a college course for example) is much easier and much more efficient using the XML format. Overall I believe the file-extension change to be a very good choice by MS, and really added to the improvement of the Office lineup.
All this being said, Office 2007 has some incredibly annoying points that need to be addressed. A big one is the amount of RAM it takes to run the program. Running XP with 512mb of RAM and want to run Office 2007? Yeah, good luck with that! Be prepared for really... slow... key... response. My work computer run's XP with 1gb of ram and I can type half a sentence before it shows up on screen. The most annoying part of my Office 2007 experience, however, happened right away with the install. You see, because Office 2007 is so different than previous versions, you can't have those previous versions installed at the same time. Office 2007 won't work properly as long as a previous version is installed on your system. I'm not entirely sure why this is but my understanding is that they use some of the same system files in the background. It's not that the programs just can't both be running at the same time, they flat-out can't be installed at the same time. Try to do it and either one or both of the programs will freak-out at you and stop working all together. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has developed a way around this already, but by default you aren't supposed to be able to have a previous version installed when Office 2007 is on the system. The installer notifies you right at the start that all previous versions must be uninstalled before 2007 can be installed. Ah... the first hurdle.
Ever uninstalled Office 2003 before? Ever try to remove Office 2003 if the uninstall doesn't go well? Oh it's a blast, and involves editing the registry and removing as much of the program by hand as possible. You can just delete the folder either because there are some files you aren't allowed to delete, and you get to play around till you find out which ones. To date at my job I've had to manually upgrade about 4 computers from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Three of the four computers that I upgraded took a over an hour just to uninstall Office 2003. You see the Office 2003 uninstaller pretty much sucks. The helpdesk employees at the IT company I work for (myself included) had to upgrade the software themselves to get a feel for how it's done. Upgrading my computer took 4 hours of troubleshooting before Office 2007 was properly installed and working. At first I uninstalled Office 2003, which actually seemed to go all right at the time. The real problems started with installing Office 2007. With the first attempt, the installer informed me that everything had been installed correctly but the only program that would open up was Word. While the Start menu icons for Office were all there, when actually going to the Program Files folder where Office was actually installed only Word had been successfully installed. To summarize the next three hours of troubleshooting, I had to uninstall and reinstall Office 2003 at least twice, (yeah, confused me too) and uninstalled/reinstalled Office 2007 at least 7 times before it finally worked. The best part about all of this is I still have no idea why it was so difficult. At no time did I change how I installed or uninstalled either of the products, for whatever reason they just didn't feel like working properly.
In my line of work I've installed a lot of Microsoft products and am no stranger to having a few issues with uninstalls/installs. The upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007, however, is by far the most painful. When the upgrade goes well (and it actually does from time to time) it goes very, very smoothly. When you have a problem with the upgrade though, you have a big problem. My experience with the upgrade, (and the experience my coworkers have had), is that either the install goes really well, or it just about gives you an aneurysm. My best advice for installing Office 2007 if you already have an Office product installed: Set aside a lot of time, and be prepared to drink heavily afterwards. Good Luck.
To start with, Office 2007 feels much different than its 2003 predecessor and in a very positive way. The new Ribbon system present in all Office 2007 programs but Outlook is a very different style of UI, but also a very welcome change. Mac owners have been able to reap the benefits of the Ribbon concept since Office 2004 came out for the Mac OS. The UI transition was relatively easy for me because I've been using Office Mac 2004 since... well since 2004 or so. For those used to any and all previous MS Office products, 2007 will seem a bit foreign but the ribbon system is a far superior interface than just the standard dropdown menus standard in the previous iterations of the program. It has been my experience that MS generally does a much better job with Office Mac than it does with the Office that is designed to work with MS's own operating system. Keeping this in mind I'm really glad they expanded on the Ribbon concepts they introduced for the Mac when developing Office 2007 for Windows.
Aside from the improved interface, users running Vista will find that there's a much better integration of Office and Vista than users running Windows XP. I don't have much personal experience with this since my work computer that has Office 2007 is running XP, but I've been able to play around a bit with Office 2007 on a Vista machine and it really starts to feel like an extension of the OS, at least until you notice how much more RAM it's taking to run. Overall my experience with Office 2007 has been a pretty positive one. Perhaps the biggest change aside from an updated UI is the new file structure. All Office 2007 products have stepped away from their old file-types and are now all based on XML, with the file-type displaying as '.xls'. While this severely limits forward-compatibility from earlier versions of Office the benefits are great. You can still work on older file-formats and still save in those formats. When opening a .doc file for example, Word will open up in Compatibility Mode and save the file as a .doc file by default in case you need to pass it on to a user that has a previous version of Office installed. Also, remember how PowerPoint presentations could easily get to 500mb or 1gb? Yeah that's pretty much gone. The XML format incorporates pictures and effects much more efficiently which really helps file size to be much more reasonable. Distributing and archiving lengthy PowerPoint presentations (like from a college course for example) is much easier and much more efficient using the XML format. Overall I believe the file-extension change to be a very good choice by MS, and really added to the improvement of the Office lineup.
All this being said, Office 2007 has some incredibly annoying points that need to be addressed. A big one is the amount of RAM it takes to run the program. Running XP with 512mb of RAM and want to run Office 2007? Yeah, good luck with that! Be prepared for really... slow... key... response. My work computer run's XP with 1gb of ram and I can type half a sentence before it shows up on screen. The most annoying part of my Office 2007 experience, however, happened right away with the install. You see, because Office 2007 is so different than previous versions, you can't have those previous versions installed at the same time. Office 2007 won't work properly as long as a previous version is installed on your system. I'm not entirely sure why this is but my understanding is that they use some of the same system files in the background. It's not that the programs just can't both be running at the same time, they flat-out can't be installed at the same time. Try to do it and either one or both of the programs will freak-out at you and stop working all together. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has developed a way around this already, but by default you aren't supposed to be able to have a previous version installed when Office 2007 is on the system. The installer notifies you right at the start that all previous versions must be uninstalled before 2007 can be installed. Ah... the first hurdle.
Ever uninstalled Office 2003 before? Ever try to remove Office 2003 if the uninstall doesn't go well? Oh it's a blast, and involves editing the registry and removing as much of the program by hand as possible. You can just delete the folder either because there are some files you aren't allowed to delete, and you get to play around till you find out which ones. To date at my job I've had to manually upgrade about 4 computers from Office 2003 to Office 2007. Three of the four computers that I upgraded took a over an hour just to uninstall Office 2003. You see the Office 2003 uninstaller pretty much sucks. The helpdesk employees at the IT company I work for (myself included) had to upgrade the software themselves to get a feel for how it's done. Upgrading my computer took 4 hours of troubleshooting before Office 2007 was properly installed and working. At first I uninstalled Office 2003, which actually seemed to go all right at the time. The real problems started with installing Office 2007. With the first attempt, the installer informed me that everything had been installed correctly but the only program that would open up was Word. While the Start menu icons for Office were all there, when actually going to the Program Files folder where Office was actually installed only Word had been successfully installed. To summarize the next three hours of troubleshooting, I had to uninstall and reinstall Office 2003 at least twice, (yeah, confused me too) and uninstalled/reinstalled Office 2007 at least 7 times before it finally worked. The best part about all of this is I still have no idea why it was so difficult. At no time did I change how I installed or uninstalled either of the products, for whatever reason they just didn't feel like working properly.
In my line of work I've installed a lot of Microsoft products and am no stranger to having a few issues with uninstalls/installs. The upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007, however, is by far the most painful. When the upgrade goes well (and it actually does from time to time) it goes very, very smoothly. When you have a problem with the upgrade though, you have a big problem. My experience with the upgrade, (and the experience my coworkers have had), is that either the install goes really well, or it just about gives you an aneurysm. My best advice for installing Office 2007 if you already have an Office product installed: Set aside a lot of time, and be prepared to drink heavily afterwards. Good Luck.