Feeling brave? Try the Office 2007 beta.

[Fabricated]

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx?showIntro=n

I'm downloading it since I'm a masochist and I'm interested in the new interface. Yeah, I know, I'm installing software that even Microsoft calls beta, I'm nuts.

[Lantyssa]

Good luck.  We'll see you in a few days after your machine is rebuilt.

[schild]

I've never had a problem with a Microsoft Beta product. I don't see the fear.

[pyi]

Speaking of microsoft betas, has anyone tried out the new vista?  What's your impression of it?

[Strazos]

Samwise says it was pretty good, considering it was an alpha(?) he was testing.

Regardless, I think I will have to get it...Eve will look extra-pretty with DX10.

[Eldron]

New vista looks pretty and runs alot quite good now. Atleast compared to the first buildi got.
Crashed every 30 seconds due to lack of driver for my sata raid controller. Also no support for nforce 2 in that build didnt help either.
But standard vista with most of the flashy turned on with nothing else installed takes up 500 MB ram.

Might download a new build and try out that office beta.

Also beta 2 of vista should be right around the corner according to the beta site.

[Lantyssa]

I've never had a problem with a Microsoft Beta product. I don't see the fear.

I've known people that had a very different experience with certain betas.

Although I was speaking mostly in jest.  An OS beta is by its nature going to have more problems than an application suite.

[Soukyan]

Been testing the Office 2007 since it was an early test version of Office 12 and it ran pretty damn well even then, although I used to get some wonky error messages, but hey... beta. In any case, I am pleasantly pleased with the functionality and the interface changes. Microsoft has done a really good job on this version of Office, but I fear the support calls I am going to receive and try to work through. Context-sensitive ribbon options are just one barrier to overcome. Thank god for Remote Assistance and other such fun support tools. There will be an early learning curve as there always is when people encounter CHANGE. You know, that thing that occurs in everything throughout our entire lives. I will never figure out why we're so averse to it. But I digress...

I much prefer to chart tools in Excel 2007 to the current set. They are far more robust and allow for easier creation of complex charts and graphs. In addition, the graphical upgrade to the finished charts and graphs is amazing. Your spreadsheets and presentations will look mighty fine for very little effort on your part. If they stole that idea from Apple, then I say, Bravo! There's no harm in making a good feature available to more people in multiple products on multiple platforms no matter who came up with the idea first. There's a reason good ideas get copied. Because they're good. And people like them. Digression again...

Haven't messed too much with the new version of Access as I haven't had the time. If you like new, shiny things, it's worth checking out the Office 2007 Beta. If anything, you'll get over the learning curve before release and the transition when and if it ever occurs will be that much easier for you.

[bhodi]

There will be an early learning curve as there always is when people encounter CHANGE. You know, that thing that occurs in everything throughout our entire lives. I will never figure out why we're so averse to it. But I digress...

We fear change.

Sound familiar? :) Yeah, that's humanity.

[Soukyan]

There will be an early learning curve as there always is when people encounter CHANGE. You know, that thing that occurs in everything throughout our entire lives. I will never figure out why we're so averse to it. But I digress...

We fear change.

Sound familiar? :) Yeah, that's humanity.

I guess I'm just a robot then.

[Toast]

A coworker just dropped of a DVD copy of the beta.

Excel can handle...ONE MILLION ROWS! Oh, the spreadsheets I will build.

[schild]

A coworker just dropped of a DVD copy of the beta.

Excel can handle...ONE MILLION ROWS! Oh, the spreadsheets I will build.

Just in time for Tale 3 of ATitD.

[Roac]

A coworker just dropped of a DVD copy of the beta.

Excel can handle...ONE MILLION ROWS! Oh, the spreadsheets I will build.

I'm thinking that somewhere before that, you'd do better to get someone to write a simple RMS for you. 

[Fabricated]

People laugh about the million rows thing until they hear that a lot of accounting firms use Excel and regularly run smack into the limits of the previous version. You should see some of the crazy shit Excel ninjas can do. It's even funnier that a lot of the people who are amazing with Excel (MAUS certified and all that) can usually barely turn their computer on.

[Numtini]

I downloaded it and it's very stable. But I work at the local town hall and roughly 2/3rds of my users are over 50 and uncomfortable with technology. I cannot even imagine rolling this out here. These are people who can't cut and paste and have had problems coping with the changes in visuals in Outlook 2003.

I can cope with the changes, but honestly, I prefer the earlier version with normal menus.

[Fabricated]

What's funny is that out of all the new huge changes to the UI the one thing people aren't going to be able to wrap their heads around is that the "File" menu is now brought up by clicking on the large Office icon in the upper left-hand corner of the window.

[angry.bob]

People laugh about the million rows thing until they hear that a lot of accounting firms use Excel and regularly run smack into the limits of the previous version.

I run into it all the time while making my spammy, trojan-laden websites. A million rows will be a godsend.

[Soukyan]

What's funny is that out of all the new huge changes to the UI the one thing people aren't going to be able to wrap their heads around is that the "File" menu is now brought up by clicking on the large Office icon in the upper left-hand corner of the window.

Perhaps not. It's odd, but I still find users who have difficulty wrapping their heads around the Start button. I'll ask them to click the Start button and they feel the need to either minimize or close every other window before doing so. The desktop icon habit is hard to break I suppose. That aside, I think the Office button may be pretty successful. Like the Start menu, it will serve as a "one-stop shop" for users to handle their opening, saving, exporting, etc. I don't argue that there will be a learning curve, but the analogy to the Start menu is there in the new UI and it'll probably be the easiest thing for users to adapt to. The ribbons on the other hand... but toolbars have always been a real problem for users to understand as well, so perhaps the simplified, graphical ribbons that cannot be removed from the UI will prevent user frustration over loss of toolbars due to changed view preferences or the ever-popular accidental resizing of the toolbar so it is no longer visible on the screen.

[Fabricated]

What's funny is that out of all the new huge changes to the UI the one thing people aren't going to be able to wrap their heads around is that the "File" menu is now brought up by clicking on the large Office icon in the upper left-hand corner of the window.

Perhaps not. It's odd, but I still find users who have difficulty wrapping their heads around the Start button. I'll ask them to click the Start button and they feel the need to either minimize or close every other window before doing so. The desktop icon habit is hard to break I suppose. That aside, I think the Office button may be pretty successful. Like the Start menu, it will serve as a "one-stop shop" for users to handle their opening, saving, exporting, etc. I don't argue that there will be a learning curve, but the analogy to the Start menu is there in the new UI and it'll probably be the easiest thing for users to adapt to. The ribbons on the other hand... but toolbars have always been a real problem for users to understand as well, so perhaps the simplified, graphical ribbons that cannot be removed from the UI will prevent user frustration over loss of toolbars due to changed view preferences or the ever-popular accidental resizing of the toolbar so it is no longer visible on the screen.

I like the ribbons myself, but I don't know if average business users (meaning non MAUS certified people and non Office Ninjas with all of the shortcuts memorized) will make real use of all the ribbons since they're obfuscated behind categories at the top of the window. I also think the live preview of text/color/etc changes on your document are great but I can't see average/neophyte users doing anything but screwing up their documents with it.

I work for the government and people who've been using the MSOffice suite since pre-97 versions still need my counseling to do some pretty basic stuff in Outlook, Word, and Excel. People fear change, and I'm not too sure how a lot of people will fare going from a system they're getting by with to something almost totally new in every way.

...that, and what companies are going to jump on the 2007 bandwagon since most of the largest businesses and institutions here have just RECENTLY switched over to WindowsXP and Office 2003. That's another reason I think Vista is gonna fly like a fucking brick when it officially gets released.

[Soukyan]

...that, and what companies are going to jump on the 2007 bandwagon since most of the largest businesses and institutions here have just RECENTLY switched over to WindowsXP and Office 2003. That's another reason I think Vista is gonna fly like a fucking brick when it officially gets released.

I agree.

[JoeTF]

Oh don't worry about Vista. They will simply cease to support XP( no more patches) and let spammers do dirty job of converting people to new system.
Upgrade, or crash.

[Fabricated]

Oh don't worry about Vista. They will simply cease to support XP( no more patches) and let spammers do dirty job of converting people to new system.
Upgrade, or crash.

Didn't really work all that well for killing Win2k, which is still very much in use in very large numbers.

[bhodi]

Didn't really work all that well for killing Win2k, which is still very much in use in very large numbers.

Reference please. All the ones I could find indicate 2k is only about 5-10% of the current online OS.

[sarius]

Didn't really work all that well for killing Win2k, which is still very much in use in very large numbers.

Reference please. All the ones I could find indicate 2k is only about 5-10% of the current online OS.

Not so in government.  Win2K is still the king and I think hell will freeze over before NMCI supports Vista.

[bhodi]

Not so in government.  Win2K is still the king and I think hell will freeze over before NMCI supports Vista.

Not sure which branch you're referencing, but Dept of State's completely upgraded and DoT runs current, as does secret service and FBI.

[Yegolev]

We are probably 99% W2K3 on the server end and 99.99% WXP on desktops.  Running without a support contract makes people nervous.

[sarius]

Not so in government.  Win2K is still the king and I think hell will freeze over before NMCI supports Vista.

Not sure which branch you're referencing, but Dept of State's completely upgraded and DoT runs current, as does secret service and FBI.

Sorry, I forget to say military when I mean it, more often than not.  Civilian side of the house moves quite a bit faster than the services.
Also, if you're not acquainted with NMCI, count your blessings.

[Engels]

I know that a lot of schools with budgetary issues stick with w2k simply because it doesn't have the higher hardware requirements XP does. We're just starting to convert to XP here where I work (a state-funded institution). The school I used to work at is still entirely w2k since they cannot afford to buy 300+ new computers with the ram for XP.

[Fabricated]

The local government here which I work for just recently started upgrading to XP but the rollout is really slow. The University and Community College here have all upgraded.

However, the big-time businesses here (Alcoa, Caterpillar, etc) and pretty much all the law-firms/any other non-ISP business in town that run Windows Servers are still running Win2k.

[JoeTF]

Regarding beta itself, they still haven't fixed few gripes I had with 2k3:
-not matching units in "set column/row width".
-that super annoying "no trailing parenthesis" error prompt is still there and it won't even let you close damn Excel this time.
-inserting functions to equations is even more fucked up than it was in previous versions (yes, the bottom sunk even deeper)

[squirrel]

I like the 2007 beta experience so far. I don't use word much - do most of my writing on a mac using an unheard of WP called Mellel - but I live in Outlook/Excel at work and the new Outlook is pretty nice. It's not a revolutionary step, but the business contact management tool and the interface tweaks are nice.

I really like the new Excel. Performance still needs tweaking but it's got some nice new features - i also like the charting tools. It also doesn't break the important plug-ins i use - such as the Salesforce.com Excel connector. And it's FREE! For testing. Of course.

[SurfD]

you know, I just came up with a GREAT use gates could put all his Billions of extra dollars towards.  He shoud fund schools and the like for upgrading all their computers to systems that could support vista when it comes out.  Then he can make it all back by getting them to sign agreements to purchase vista / office 2k7 licencing plans for the next 5to 10 years :P

[Miasma]

If you're feeling extra brave or have a spare computer you don't mind using as a guinea pig Vista Beta 2 is now available.

[Engels]

Installed Vista this weekend. Its got new shinies, but it had a 645 mb ram footprint. At idle. MS claims that 512 is enough to run it, but what they aren't saying is that there's spill over into the page file even at 512. Its freakin scary.

For whatever reason, it kept on 'forgetting' about my wireless USB mouse. It would work after reboot sometimes, sometimes not. Same thing for my USB flash drive. It would work if I booted with it plugged in, but forget plug and play.

Useless for me at home right now since it won't run Eve. Eve was not happy with Direct X 10. Oh, and it didn't have Sound Blaster Live! drivers. You know, that sound card that is more ubiquitous than herpes.

Lots of backwards compatibility issues it seems.

[schild]

Office 07 is pretty sweet. The new webfriendly fonts are super nice. Though, all I did was install Word and east asian language support. In fact, that's what prompted me to install Office, I couldn't find my winxp CD to install japanese. :P