[gui-talk] Five reasons not to upgrade to Office 2007

[albert griffith]

I've been reading all the information I can find about this program and it 
seems that around two out of three people think the, ribbon approach, is 
better.  The rest really dislike it, however.  Every time Microsoft releases 
an upgrade, the same old tired argument about it being barely out of beta is 
trotted out to discourage all but the most adventurous.  Also, converters 
will be readily available and it's not difficult to save documents in the 
format preferred by the intended recipient.  My concerns have to do with 
screen reader accessibility and I haven't heard anything about that yet.  As 
always, those les adventurous, will be posting their orders for the new 
products as soon as possible while those with their feet planted more firmly 
on the ground will do the wisest thing and wait for six months to a year 
before upgrading.  I'll probably be in that line outside of a Best Buy at 
around midnight on January, 29th.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: <blindtlk at nfbnet.org>; <promotion-technology at nfbnet.org>; 
<gui-talk at nfbnet.org>; <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>; <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>; 
<nabop at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 4:34 PM
Subject: [gui-talk] Five reasons not to upgrade to Office 2007


|
| >
| >Five reasons not to upgrade to Office 2007
| >By Angus Kidman
| >Monday, 04 December 2006
| >IT Wire
| >
| >There's been coverage galore of the benefits of the new interface
| >sported by Office 2007, but there are plenty of good reasons not to
| >make
| >the switch to the latest version of Microsoft's best-selling
| >product
| >suite. Here's five of the most compelling. If you fit any of these
| >scenarios, then there's precious little point in making an
| >immediate
| >switch to what the company refers to as the "2007 Office System",
| >either
| >now (when it's available for corporate licence holders) or in
| >January,
| >when it goes on sale at retailers.
| >
| >Reason 1: You already know how to use your favourite Office
| >applications. The centrepiece of the latest release of Office is
| >the new
| >ribbon interface, which Microsoft has endlessly touted as making
| >it
| >easier to discover many of the features which are already included
| >in
| >Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but which users have somehow failed to
| >discover buried under a wealth of menus and toolbars.
| >
| >This is a perfectly valid argument as far as new users are
| >concerned,
| >but Office itself is hardly a new product, with some elements of it
| >now
| >dating back more than 20 years. That means that there's several
| >million
| >people who actually know what they're doing with the product -- or
| >rather, who did until Microsoft decided that menus were entirely
| >unnecessary.
| >
| >The sole concession to these users is a series of interactive
| >guides on
| >the Microsoft Web site which map . I've asked Microsoft several
| >times
| >why there couldn't be an option to overlay the old menu interface
| >for
| >existing users -- switched off by default, but available if you
| >want it
| >-- and never received a satisfactory reply. The bottom line
| >remains: if
| >you know what you're doing, why would you want to waste time having
| >to
| >learn a whole new product just because Microsoft thinks it's a
| >good
| >idea?
| >
| >Reason 2: You like a consistent interface in all of your apps.
| >Despite
| >the endless pro-ribbon propaganda, it's not actually found in
| >every
| >element of Office. In particular, it hasn't been introduced to
| >Outlook.
| >Microsoft officials say this is simply a question of resources, and
| >that
| >the ribbon will probably appear there eventually. A cynic might
| >argue
| >that Outlook has fewer buried features, and thus demonstrates that
| >the
| >ribbon isn't needed anyway.
| >
| >Whatever the reason, though, the end result is that one of the
| >major
| >selling points for previous versions of Office -- a consistent
| >interface
| >across every application -- has disappeared. If this is in fact
| >important to you, Office 2007 is a poor choice.
| >
| >Reason 3: You frequently exchange files with users outside your
| >organisation. Office 2007 boasts a new, XML-based file format. This
| >does
| >in fact have several benefits -- files are smaller, less likely to
| >get
| >corrupted and the file format is more easily exploited by other
| >applications. If everyone in your company is using it -- or if
| >you're a
| >one-person band and don't share files at all -- then it's a useful
| >choice.
| >
| >However, if you are feeling "collaborative" (to use an MS buzzword)
| >and
| >want to actually mail those files to other people, then it's a
| >right
| >pain. Assuming your correspondents don't have Office 2007 (and most
| >of
| >them won't), you'll either have to do a 'Save As' into the old
| >format
| >every time you send a file, or convince them to install a converter
| >(and
| >pray they're running a version where that's an option). Frankly,
| >who
| >needs the hassle?
| >
| >Reason 4: You use macros and other customisation features
| >extensively.
| >Microsoft has always boasted about the fact that there's an entire
| >community of Office developers out there building custom
| >applications on
| >top of Word, Excel and the like. It generally makes less noise
| >about the
| >fact that every new version of Office renders these inoperable
| >until
| >they're recoded to fit the new interface and file formats. With
| >ribbons
| >sprinkled everywhere and a totally new approach to files, there's
| >no
| >point even contemplating shifting unless your developer has already
| >made
| >the migration, or you have a lot of time on your hands.
| >
| >Reason 5: It's still essentially a version 0 application. While
| >Microsoft boasts that the number of beta testers for Office 2007
| >far
| >exceeds any previous versions, it still remains a product that's
| >only
| >just come out of beta. Yes, it's selfish to let other people
| >discover
| >all the flaws, but why risk your business (or even just your home
| >PC)
| >until there's been a patch or two?
| >_____________________________________________________________
|
| David Andrews and white cane Harry.
|
|
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