|
|
|
|
 Software : Microsoft Office XP Professional Upgrade [Old Version] |
|
Rating:  - But Where Is The Difference
Yes, Office XP performs all the tricks so that any document, presentation and/or spread sheet looks like a million dollars but how many times is Microsoft going to slap a label on a product and declare it to be a major improvement?
The features found in Office XP are almost a clone to the previous Office suite's. Yes, you can now hold 24 items in your clipboard and that is indeed something but isn't that a nifty trick that could have been added as a download? The task panes, etc. look nice but nobody in the work world is going to use them. Also, you need a full screen when you are seriously working and some of Office XP's innovations reduce the work area.
If you are happy with the Office suite you are currently using, keep it and ignore this upgrade. There are no improvements big or small that justify the cost. Yes, it has the best programs going but it is difficult to install and after you finally get it on your system you are left with - a clone of the Office Suite you were previously using.
Rating: - The need for a new office, not a new look.
This upgrade is particulary useless if you have an Office 2000 product. The design has been updated and 'smoothed' over. The only draw-back to this product is the fact that Word still auto-formats like usual, without the writers consent. If you are in the market for an upgrade over a pre-2000 office product this is for you. Would a 2000 Office owner get his/her's money worth in buying this, no.
Rating:  - Increase your productivity... Get Office XP
Office XP is a great improvement over version of Office prior to 2000. Smart tags help to bring key features out that once were hidden from view, making it much easier to be productive in Office. Great improvements have been made in Access 2002 which is now much easier to use than its predecessor was, even easy enough that a novice user could figure out how to setup a basic database with little problem. PowerPoint 2002 also features some nice new transitions and other "bells and whistles" to help make your presentation look more professional. For those of you who may have created Binder files, in previous versions of Office, this feature is no longer available, however an unbind feature comes with Office XP. The downside that I have heard much about is the dreaded Product Activation. If you work within your license to use Office, you should never have any problems. My computer gets worked pretty hard, and I often have to reinstall Windows. Needless to say, Office has to be reactivated. Never once has MS staff refused to activate my product. This "torment" is really more dreaded than most users will ever find it to actually be. Be more productive with a copy of Office XP today!
Rating:  - ((((B=L=O=A=T=E=D))))
I've been using this software for about three months now and have installed it on seven or eight different machines that I maintain, and honestly, the best I can say is that the actual upgrade process is very smooth--this Office suite comes on one CD instead of two, it scans for previous versions, offers full installation options, and explains very clearly what it is doing. When I upgraded to Office 2000, the software took upwards of an hour; with XP, the upgrades took from ten to forty minutes, depending on the speed of the machine I was upgrading to.
You will first notice how nice everything looks and the new "Smart Pane," which is supposed to be a window with what Office thinks you will want to do. The contents of this pane include your most recently used documents and options to create new documents.
The menus look a lot like the DHTML effects common on many web sites--menu options are "highlighted" when you mouse over them. A few other things have changed, but the changes are mostly cosmetic.
The Smart Pane, which is really more of a "pain" than a "pane," is obtrusive to me--I am what is called a "power user," i.e., I use MS Office for about four hours a day, rely on it, and am very familiar with it. When I open an application, I want wide, open space. I often close the Smart Pane without using its features, instead opening documents the way I have for years-either by opening them from the Work menu I added or by clicking to them. This Smart Pane is supposed to close when you open something, but sometimes it doesn't, meaning I have to click to close it.
Worse, the Smart Pane automatically opens when you want to do something it thinks requires many options. For example, if I want to modify a style in Word, the Smart Pane appears and offers me myriad options for editing my styles. This whole process of opening the Smart Pane slows everything down (I'm running a Pentium III 933 mHz with 128 mb RAM and a 7200 rpm ultra ATA hard drive with relatively few applications installed; got to keep it clean!!).
Editing styles provides a good example of how bloated the software is. You may recall from Office 2000 that all the styles were either built in or created by the user. Now, however, XP creates new styles based on what it finds in your document. For example, if you have a italicized one of your Heading 1s, XP will show the regular Heading 1 style and the Heading 1 style with italics. Imagine how many such styles you might have in your document; with these new additions, XP has easily doubled or tripled the number of styles I must wade through to get the one I want.
XP slows down every machine it's loaded on. My oldest machine, a Dell Pentium 75 running Win 98, was still chugging along quite nicely, even with Office 2000 installed. Now, however, after I've installed XP on it, it moves so slowly that it's almost laughable-clicked buttons bubble up comically. The worst part is that the computer is much, much slower, even if I'm not using any of the XP applications. I guess there's too much XP stuff now running in the background.
I have a few gripes with Word, many related to printing problems, but one is particularly laughable, typical of Microsoft. Now, when Word crashes, it politely tells you that it has done so and offers to send a report of the problem to Bill. It swears that it won't send any personal data. The first few times I saw this, I thought, sure, why not, send it, maybe it'll help. Hah! Each time, without fail, my computer froze! So, instead of having just one program crash, I ended up with a frozen machine. Remember, I'm primarily using a new, major name machine with little other software installed. Learned not to do that real quick!
There is one change I do like in Word. Since I do a lot of editing for a living, I find the new style of showing comments much better than the previous method. In Office 2000, comments were shown as "sticky notes" that appeared when you moused over them. Now, however, the comments appear as neat rounded squares in the margin. They look good on the screen and they print out well for others to read.
Another major reason I upgraded was because of a fatal flaw in FrontPage 2000. I have detailed more of this problem in my review of FP2002, but essentially, FP2000 could not publish my web site because it was too large. I was hoping that the bundled FP2002 would have fixed that bug. It did, but it has other compatibility issues that MS hasn't been able to resolve with most web hosts.
My relatively low rating is for the upgrade, not for the overall quality of the product. The product, which crashes at least as frequently as Office 2000, seems to be no more functional than its predecessor, meaning that the upgrade is necessary only for those who want to have the latest thing. The best news is that I've learned how to take advantage of MS's support discussion groups. The answers and workarounds I found in those groups were a thousand times more helpful than MS's pitiful Help or canned tech support messages. Again: Don't pay for support-go to their support groups for help first.
In short, this is something of a "non-upgrade," and will most likely cause more problems than it will fix.
Rating: - Not enough features to be worth upgrading
Office XP, is a solid upgarde to Office 2000. But I must say, that most of the changes are cosmetic, which makes it a hard sell for paying $X to upgarde.
Here are the best of the new features in each application, in my opinion:
-- All applications - new "task pane" allows you to see related commands to your current position in the document.
-- there is a good feature in Word, to track changes with bubbles on the side of the document. It's much easier to read, and lawyers should love it.
-- Outlook is pretty much the same.
-- Excel - formulas manipulaitons are sort of easier and more intuitive.
I would say that if you are a features geek, that can't live without the latets UI, you should upgarde, othewise I would stick with Office 2k.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
Home
