kumarmohit
Technomancer
(Hope I am the first one to do so)
A Quick Review of Office 2007 Beta (Provided by Digit in August 2006 DVD)
by
Mohit Kumar
This is going to be my first review so not of fancy stuff here as my reviewing skills are also well sort of Beta so comments are most welcome.
The Test Bed (I threw a rather weak PC deliberately)
~ Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz
~ Mercury 845GL motherboard
~ 376 MB System RAM and 8 MB shared by Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics with DirectX 9c and Driver version 6.14.10.4342
~ Windows XP Home SP2 and all latest applicable updates (Like if you have another choice)
~ An 80 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi and 40 GB Samsung HDD (Installation was on Hitachi Drive while files are stored on Samsung Drive)
Background
It’s after sometime that I am getting my hands dirty with MSOffice. The last time was when 2003 version was responsible for single handedly destroying my graduation project. Ever since I have been working with OpenOffice.org and 1.1.5 is the version for me because 2.x versions are Super Slow on my PC and I don’t need Base. Its this fact that OOo 2.x is slow on My PC that I have been looking for an alternative. I tried EasyOffice with PDF Filter but its nagware so … Its good to test a product from MS Office line again the other reason is of course that despite being a dedicated freeware user and supporter the program has the looks that have impressed me. In short – its beautiful and really fast considering its looks.
Installation
The Installation is SLOW, so slow that OOo2.x‘s installation seemed a blitzkrieg and that is saying something. You can get the key from MS alright if you have a Widows Live or Hotmail account but once you have installed you still have to activate the software which MS says for anti piracy reasons, though why this on a Beta release I fail to understand. It says some features will be disabled until you activate, which features. I cannot say as I activated straight away. One more thing is that the Beta is to expire on Feb 1 2007 but it says that post this date some features will be disabled again I cannot say which may MS is itself unsure if to kill the Beta or cripple it though what should crippling a Beta do good to user or MS I fail to understand. And ah the installed size is 489 MB when MS asks for 2GB free space.
Working, Look and Feel
The new interface is beautiful and Ribbon is a really well thought concept. Sees MS takes a leaf from Apple. Strangely the new background of Word window looks similar to Mac OS X’s default Aqua wallpaper. Speed really good in 2007 and UI is really responsive even at this PC. I whole heartedly hope OOo3.x will have this speed and shamelessly request them to make a clone of this version in all aspects Speed (except Installer speed), UI, Responsiveness and whatever they may think off.
Now the 4 basic components i.e. Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint all get the Ribbon interface while Outlook and others make do with 2003 like interface. Microsoft Office Document Imaging integrated OCR software does not even get that and its UI is similar to Office 2000.
The Spell Check and Grammar check are by far the worst and I got so fed up of it that I kept on Jumping to OOo2.0.3 just for spell checking. I wonder if MS picked some call-center employee from Noida or Gurgaon to write these code modules. Some times it falls asleep sort of and recognizes mistake on reopening file (Strange but its still a Beta). And if you want to disable the checks you have to go annoyingly deep into Word options. Even the updating features are too deep to have easy access.
There is PDF support in this Beta strangely some people thought MS had dropped PDF support but its there in MS Word. Try Save as dialog box, its there in Save as type drop down menu. There is read and write support for Microsoft Works though I wonder who uses Works in India. As expected no Oasis Open Document support yet
The most annoying feature and capable to put me off from MS Office 2007 forever is that even though I press enter and start a new paragraph the stupid thing will carry on formatting making me to manually tell it not to format any longer. This stupid flaw is going to waste a lot of user time.
Concerning the ribbon the one feature I really would love to see in OOo3.x is the ability to customize your own Home tab where you can choose what feature buttons you want from any tab, like I do not need the style block of home tab so I should have the ability to replace it with some block from Insert or Page Layout tab. There is a Quick Access toolbar at the top but its more or less useless except for basic file saving and redo undo actions etc.
Summary
Plus Points:
~ New UI is responsive and beautiful.
~ PDF export
~ Speed (You bet the thing is Fast)
Minus points:
~ Flowing Formatting
~ Over eager and frankly USELESS spell check and grammar check.
~ Ultra slow installer.
~ Wonder how many registrations or activations are required yet.
~ No ODF support yet
Conclusion
Use it if you want something fast but for heaven’s sake turn the spell check off. But than its still a Beta and is free for next 5 months and I can use it till then but with this version in hand no chance I am going to buy even the cheapest Student Teacher Edition. Better to stay with OOo1.1.5 and use OOo2.x if you have monster of a PC and badly need a Database component or Open Document Format Support .
A Quick Review of Office 2007 Beta (Provided by Digit in August 2006 DVD)
by
Mohit Kumar
This is going to be my first review so not of fancy stuff here as my reviewing skills are also well sort of Beta so comments are most welcome.
The Test Bed (I threw a rather weak PC deliberately)
~ Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz
~ Mercury 845GL motherboard
~ 376 MB System RAM and 8 MB shared by Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics with DirectX 9c and Driver version 6.14.10.4342
~ Windows XP Home SP2 and all latest applicable updates (Like if you have another choice)
~ An 80 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi and 40 GB Samsung HDD (Installation was on Hitachi Drive while files are stored on Samsung Drive)
Background
It’s after sometime that I am getting my hands dirty with MSOffice. The last time was when 2003 version was responsible for single handedly destroying my graduation project. Ever since I have been working with OpenOffice.org and 1.1.5 is the version for me because 2.x versions are Super Slow on my PC and I don’t need Base. Its this fact that OOo 2.x is slow on My PC that I have been looking for an alternative. I tried EasyOffice with PDF Filter but its nagware so … Its good to test a product from MS Office line again the other reason is of course that despite being a dedicated freeware user and supporter the program has the looks that have impressed me. In short – its beautiful and really fast considering its looks.
Installation
The Installation is SLOW, so slow that OOo2.x‘s installation seemed a blitzkrieg and that is saying something. You can get the key from MS alright if you have a Widows Live or Hotmail account but once you have installed you still have to activate the software which MS says for anti piracy reasons, though why this on a Beta release I fail to understand. It says some features will be disabled until you activate, which features. I cannot say as I activated straight away. One more thing is that the Beta is to expire on Feb 1 2007 but it says that post this date some features will be disabled again I cannot say which may MS is itself unsure if to kill the Beta or cripple it though what should crippling a Beta do good to user or MS I fail to understand. And ah the installed size is 489 MB when MS asks for 2GB free space.
Working, Look and Feel
The new interface is beautiful and Ribbon is a really well thought concept. Sees MS takes a leaf from Apple. Strangely the new background of Word window looks similar to Mac OS X’s default Aqua wallpaper. Speed really good in 2007 and UI is really responsive even at this PC. I whole heartedly hope OOo3.x will have this speed and shamelessly request them to make a clone of this version in all aspects Speed (except Installer speed), UI, Responsiveness and whatever they may think off.
Now the 4 basic components i.e. Word, Excel, Access and PowerPoint all get the Ribbon interface while Outlook and others make do with 2003 like interface. Microsoft Office Document Imaging integrated OCR software does not even get that and its UI is similar to Office 2000.
The Spell Check and Grammar check are by far the worst and I got so fed up of it that I kept on Jumping to OOo2.0.3 just for spell checking. I wonder if MS picked some call-center employee from Noida or Gurgaon to write these code modules. Some times it falls asleep sort of and recognizes mistake on reopening file (Strange but its still a Beta). And if you want to disable the checks you have to go annoyingly deep into Word options. Even the updating features are too deep to have easy access.
There is PDF support in this Beta strangely some people thought MS had dropped PDF support but its there in MS Word. Try Save as dialog box, its there in Save as type drop down menu. There is read and write support for Microsoft Works though I wonder who uses Works in India. As expected no Oasis Open Document support yet
The most annoying feature and capable to put me off from MS Office 2007 forever is that even though I press enter and start a new paragraph the stupid thing will carry on formatting making me to manually tell it not to format any longer. This stupid flaw is going to waste a lot of user time.
Concerning the ribbon the one feature I really would love to see in OOo3.x is the ability to customize your own Home tab where you can choose what feature buttons you want from any tab, like I do not need the style block of home tab so I should have the ability to replace it with some block from Insert or Page Layout tab. There is a Quick Access toolbar at the top but its more or less useless except for basic file saving and redo undo actions etc.
Summary
Plus Points:
~ New UI is responsive and beautiful.
~ PDF export
~ Speed (You bet the thing is Fast)
Minus points:
~ Flowing Formatting
~ Over eager and frankly USELESS spell check and grammar check.
~ Ultra slow installer.
~ Wonder how many registrations or activations are required yet.
~ No ODF support yet
Conclusion
Use it if you want something fast but for heaven’s sake turn the spell check off. But than its still a Beta and is free for next 5 months and I can use it till then but with this version in hand no chance I am going to buy even the cheapest Student Teacher Edition. Better to stay with OOo1.1.5 and use OOo2.x if you have monster of a PC and badly need a Database component or Open Document Format Support .
