bit-tech Shopping: Microsoft Office Standard 2007

• E-mail/Contact Manager
• Presentation
• Spreadsheet
• Word Processor

• Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64
• Microsoft Windows XP

Rating: 4

Time with product: 8 Weeks

Strengths: More options, cleaner look

Weaknesses: Very different from previous versions of Office

Summary: I would not buy unless you like teaching yourself new software - completely diferent from previous versions. Microsoft should have kept the same layout and cleaned up the design, not change both so the basic user has to relearn all the tools and their locations over again.

Rating: 6

Time with product: 2 Months

Strengths: Outlook allows you to deliver POP3 mail to separate PST files (unavailable in 2003)

Weaknesses: Ribbons! .docx, .xlsx

Summary: I hate the new Office "ribbons" technology - replacing the menus and shortcuts with an oversized toolbar that you can switch between "Home", "Page Layout", "View", and other settings. The trouble is finding the settings that you want to apply - font settings are in Home, comments are in Reviewing, I still have no idea where picture/object formatting is. I spend more time trying to figure out where common functions are located: captions, cross references, table of contents, etc., then I used to in 2003. Ribbons = Bad.The only redeeming quality is Outlook 2007 - I have 4 POP accounts, Gmail, Exchange, and IMAP. In 2003, all POP mail would be delivered into the Exchange inbox, and I would have to create a rule to move it to another folder. Now, you can have multiple PST files and have POP accounts delivered directly into the right inbox. Still can't have multiple Exchange accounts, which is disappointing, as I have two Exchange servers and 3-4 mail accounts that I access, but that's annoying but easy enough to fix with multiple Outlook profiles.Docx and Xlsx formats are the new Microsoft formats for Word documents and Excel spreadsheets - other then being slightly smaller in size then 2003 formats the only reason for these stupid things is to force people to upgrade to 2007 or download a '2007 patch' for Office 2003.I don't see any real compelling reason to upgrade to 2007 from 2003. I still like it better than Open Office 2.0, though.

Rating: 6

Time with product: 1 Week

Strengths: A great deal more options

Weaknesses: A lot more cumbersome, not as user friendly

Summary: Have only used Outlook 2007 of this product so far, a lot more options for doing things and therefore harder to use. Do not like the View options.Importing Address book & my three e-mail accounts resulted in three of everything causing more work to delete the extras. This program needs work.