The Nays Have It – For Now

The January 12 2007 issue of Computing Canada carries two articles about Microsoft's new software. I endorse both articles.

Office 2007

On page 9 Charles Whaley says "... products that already have far more features than anyone could ever use." And "The new features are attractive, but, in many cases, not attractive enough to justify the cost of upgrading".

Windows Vista

On pages 18-19 Lynn Greiner says of Vista "It has also created a whole new set of pains for users and administrators, turning the user interface on its ear, and making enough changes in coding and security to render many things inoperable".

Lynn goes on to describe hardware and software failures.

Lynn points out that "Vista continues to hide file extensions by default". Many of us will see this as a terrible lapse in security – it is one of the best ways to hide the impact of a bad program from a user's eyes.

Lynn cuts to the chase with "And staff will need training too; help desks will likely be very busy".

So what

So this. I have previously explained my feelings on Office 2007. Once you get past the ribbon-thingy, you will find that you have Office 2003. The dialogue boxes are identical.

Office 2007 appears to me to be Office 2003 with an extra confusing layer of interface, especially for experienced users.

The bad news is that many users are trained by experienced users – word-of-mouth – so now most users know what they need to know to get the job done in office 2000/2002/2003, but all will be thwarted by the new barrier represented by Ribbon.

Oh yes – Office 2007 has new document formats, so anticipate a slew of corrupted-document problems.

Get Rich Quick!

Get used to hearing this. Trainers will be leaping for joy, and arguing about who pays for lunch, but this time it will be seen as a privilege.

Trainers stand to make a great deal of money by offering courses in navigating Office 2007 products.

Today most users know what they want to do – "I want to change the spacing before my paragraph" or "I want to change the heading text in my second section". They just won't know where to find it.

Anyone having a one-day course in mapping the Ribbon to the unchanged and familiar dialogue boxes will Get Rich Quick, especially in firms that launch Office2007.

Users will be screaming from 8:30 a.m. Monday until you get there.

Take an invoice with you.