MS Office 2007 Beta

Has anyone tried using it? I downloaded it today but havent installed it....
Good, bad, indifferent?

 

sorry. thought this was a thread about multiple sclerosis.

 

In a previous life, I worked for a software company that partnered heavily with Microsoft, and there's only one thing to do with Microsoft beta software:

Avoid it like the plague.

If you think their normal release software is buggy and unstable, you should see their betas. Our engineers would code to things in their beta software, and would then be forced to recode everything once the release software came out.

Don't even bother with it. It's not worth the hassel.

 

Thanks... was going to install it, but decided to wait to see if anyone had a solid response ....

 

Long-term, you'll be just as happy with OpenOffice.org as you would with Microsoft's "revolutionary" new revision of Office.

Uses less memory, file sizes are smaller, reads and saves all MS Office files pretty much natively and looks almost exactly like MS Office. If M$ changes file formats, they'll have it cracked within a month. I abandoned M$ Office four years ago and haven't looked back.

It's free (open-source via the GPL), and unlike Microsoft, the OpenOffice developers don't try to reinvent the wheel every 2-3 years just to force people to upgrade to the new version.

For Mac OS X users (Intel or PowerPC), there's a version of the same software called NeoOffice.

 

Is a thought but A) I paid 10 bucks for MS Office 2003 professional because the local university as a software deal with Microsoft and B) Expect them to have the same thing when 2007 comes out...
I can do Microsoft for 10 bucks

 

I'm a bit leery of the new UI, but I'm probably going to install 2K7 this week sometime anyway. I tried IE7 b2/3 and really, really didn't like the new no-menus look. But I've heard from Word experts I trust that it's terrific "after you get used to it" (and you can customize it back to the old way, of course). Also have heard that it's quite slow in its current beta. You can install it and leave your current installation intact, too, although I've heard it doesn't agree with Works 9.

O is fine if you're not a high-level user. If you're heavily into macros in Excel or Word, or if you have professors who rigorously demand perfect Word compatibility and you wish to take no chances, you're better off sticking with MS. But O gets better every time. Its import/export of Word docs isn't perfect, but neither is Word's. Both are bloated and slow, IMHO, even on my AMD-64 3500 with a gig of RAM. But you can't beat the price.