Office 2007 first impressions
Admittedly I’ve only been using it for a short time, but here are my initial thoughts about Office 2007.
What I like about Office 2007
- the new navigation is sorta kinda logical
- PDF creation is a breeze; if only Acrobat were this smooth. (Not built-in; you need the download to do it.)
- new file formats: a bunch of XML wrapped up in a zip. At last, built-in compression, and a file format that can be hacked!
What I don’t like about Office 2007
- the new navigation means there’s a learning curve… and half the time old-style dialogue boxes and such popup, showing that really the redesign is only half complete
- severely limited colour schemes that break the Windows preferences
- Outlook seems slower – clunky, in fact, sometimes. And keeps complaining it was closed unexpectedly, even sometimes when it wasn’t.
- Outlook does strange things while writing emails, for instance removing a signature from the text when changing the account you’ll send it from.
- have to save in the old format when sending files around, as I can’t assume others have the compatibility pack
Still no PDF built in? My Mac will turn any printable thing into a PDF, straight out of the box. What’s Microsoft’s problem?
And I didn’t know Outlook could get slower than what I experience here at work…
Apparently the PDF stuff was made optional after Adobe threatened Microsoft with legal action. As I noted back in ’05, Adobe must have been terrified that their revenue from selling Acrobat would vanish overnight if it was built-in.