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 Software : Microsoft Office XP Professional [OLD VERSION] |
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Rating:  - Should You Upgrade?
The answer depends on your relationship with previous versions of Office or whatever office suite you use. if you're sick of running through drop-down menus to find the commands you need, Task Panes may help. But some experienced users may conclude that Task Panes take up too much screen real estate doing things that the users already know how to accomplish. Smart Tags are great way to fine-tune Office's automatic corrections and add some new functions, but they also may perform some actions you wish they hadn't and may distract the user. In short, if you have a difficult time getting your current office suite to do what you want, Office XP may be a big help. But if you've already mastered the drop-down menus and configuration tweaks that you need in order to work efficiently, XP's new suitewide features probably aren't worth spending.
The answer to the upgrade question also depends on what you do with Office. If you spend most of your time in any application - especially Excel where I found few changes for the good - you probably won't gain much by switching. On the other hand, if you find yourself constantly jumping from Outlook to Word to PowerPoint and using them all to their fullest, the improvements will probably make the upgrade worthwhile. Users already running Office 2000 can wait another year or two before they upgrade, by that time you will see the neccessity of the features in Office XP!
Rating:  - Major problems
XP is the beginning of the end as far as system privacy is concercned and a slew of other problems. Here are several reasons why you shouldn't use XP.
1: General Exclusivity
Manufacturers are requested to submit your drivers directly to Microsoft for approval before you try to peddle them to consumers.
2: Media Player 8
MP8 might lock out other codecs like MP3 and not allow them to make copies of their own music that they can play from their own hard drives. It is not so much about what MP8 can do, it is about what it can prevent us from doing with music and video that we already paid for.
3: Missing Features
Are we going to have a backup program like we did in the old days? Are we going to get dual monitor support in the home version like Windows 98 SE has? Are we going to get back the basic fax functionality we used to have? In order to get those features, we will have to buy a "Plus Pack" of some kind for another 50 dollars. They stripped those features from the home version and are forcing us to pay an extra 100 or 200 dollars to get the professional version.
4: Bundling Restrictions And Excessive Integration
Many of us feel uncomfortable that we are forced to use IE instead of Opera or Netscape browsers. We don't want all of that internet bloat-ware bundled into the basic operating system. We want to be able to uninstall IE and Outlook Express whenever we feel the urge. Not that we will necessarily, because both of those products are actually pretty good in their 6.x versions, but we want the option. What it boils down to is that we just want control over our Internet experience and our own applications. Is that too much to ask?
5: Security
We all know how insecure Outlook and IIS have been, but there are now concerns about changes in the XP Home Edition (and possibly other versions) that will provide support for unrestricted, full raw sockets. This is VERY scary.
6: Product Activation
This is a system designed primarily to prevent casual piracy. You know how you had to go buy a full copy of Windows 98 SE at the store because all your new computer came with was some stupid restore disk? You know how you went ahead and installed that copy of Windows 98 SE on your original machine as well as on the new one you just bought? Well, this technology will stop you from doing that. Why all the fuss? Because in part, people do pirate operating systems on a casual basis. They hate that they are forced to pay upgrade fees for what they consider to be bug fixes anyway. They hate that they have to put up with those bloated, OEM installs from Dell, Gateway and others who put everything from AOL to Walmart advertisements in the Start menu. They want to be able to do a clean install of the basic OS without all of that junk getting in the way, so they take a copy that they bought or got from a friend and use that single copy to install it on all of their machines. After all, almost every single computer you can buy comes with Windows on it, so why can't you just install the version you want the way you want and be done with it? Because according to the licensing terms, that is totally illegal, that's why.
I am not Anti-Microsoft just anti XP. Buyer beware.
Rating:  - Caution
Be aware that there is currently an incompatibility between this product and HP's video drivers that makes some Excel 2002 workbooks inoperable. Microsoft is aware of this problem and may already have a patch for it which would be downloadable from their website.
Rating: - Worst thing since Hoof and Mouth Disease
Whatever you do, do NOT install this on a computer with critical files. Having gone through the installation without any errors, on restart NONE of my non-Microsoft software worked. NONE. And reinstalling it didn't help at all. I ended up deleting my whole hard drive and installing Office 97 back on my computer in order to get everything functioning again. Trust me, it's not worth it.
Rating: - not compatable with Windows 2000 Professional
When I installed Windows office, it crashed my Windows 2000 Professional. Also, Sblive is not compatible with WIndows 2000. It seems to be like they are not compatible to each other. BE CAREFUL when you upgrade!!!!!
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