Sourabh’s blog

Say what ever you want about Microsoft for their OS called Windows and other products like their mail service. I curse them for it too more often that not. Microsoft must have enjoyed a lot of criticism for these products over ages. They come up with new updates and security flaw patches every second Tuesday of each month, but during all this while they have always had one of their products remarkably different. It has always been the best and served the purpose it is intended for. Tough to get any obvious, has to be Microsoft Office. My earliest memories of an office suite go a little less than a decade ago – using MS Office 97 on Windows 98.

Back to present, Microsoft Office 2007 – currently beta. I tried out the Beta release provided exclusively by Digit this month in their August DVD. Installation was completed even before I realized that the Setup was running. Just a couple of mouse clicks and the office suite was ready out of the box. Good work! The new looks of Office is really sexy and has given a lot of importance to ergonomics. The feel and layout is completed revamped. A whole set of features have been minutely fine-tuned and glorified for aesthetic and efficient productivity.

The primary reason to try Office 2007 beta was to check out its graph feature for benchmarking stats at LaptopLogic, besides killing time. I must accept I grossly underestimated MS capabilities in this respect. The chart feature has been completely revamped with Shadows, fill-effects and textures. That being said, it is just the tip of the ice-berg. Students working on their presentation, Office employees setting out sheets in Excel and normal people doing normal work in Word wont mind the added zing to MS Office, especially when they work long hours on it. I plan to install this on all the systems in our company’s office. It’s FREE! Why wont I?

If you were to hide the taskbar and full-screen MS Office, you would in all probability forget you are working in Windows. As the cliché goes - you have to see it, to believe it. All these innovative things do not come without flaws. I have seen some minor glitches and adjustments but I do not thing it is any big deal. When the final product rolls out, things would be a perfect. After all it does cost an arm and leg for the Entire Office Suite, even more than a Windows copy (lacking office files viewing capabilities).

All I wanna pass on is, if you are on Windows – give it a try. It’s just awesome with added functionality, layout and cooler looks while still being easy on the System’s Resources. When you use it, it wouldn’t take time for ya to realize that MS was not procrastinating over the past few years. Any bashers for MS Office?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 1:36 am and is filed under Personal, Reviews, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.