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Microsoft unleashes Office 2007 to consumers
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Windows Vista wasn’t the only flagship product that Microsoft released last Tuesday. Microsoft also started selling the consumer version of Office 2007. The software behemoth has been releasing a new version of Office periodically since 1989. Today, Office is the industry standard for office productivity programs.
Microsoft had released Office 2007 to its business customers two months ago. Microsoft then waited until January 29, so it could launch the consumer version on the same day as its new operating system. Users have a different assortment of programs depending on the edition of Office that they buy. The student edition includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.
Critics are generally pleased with the latest upgrade to the office suite. They praise the intuitive reorganization of the interface. Users no longer have to navigate through a series of drop down menus to find a particular tool. Instead, Microsoft introduced what it calls “ribbons.” Ribbons have replaced the familiar menus with a more visually appealing style that helps people find often ignored functions. The ribbon is a horizontal bar across the top with labeled tabs. Instead of pulling down a dropping menu, users now click on a ribbon tab and then click on click on the appropriate icon. This makes functions easier to find and use.
Office 2007 has many smaller improvements across the board. In Word, for example, there is now a contextual spell check. Word can recognize if “where” should be in place of “wear”. In addition, Office 2007 will also save in smaller files sizes and files will be less vulnerable from data corruption.
Of course, there are down sides to Microsoft’s new product. Users may experience some hassles when they try to open up an Office 2007 file in an older version of Office. As with all new software, there is a learning curve for all adopting customers. In addition, Microsoft has subtly raised its price for support from $35 to $49 per incident.
The absolute minimum requirements to install Office 2007 on a computer is a 500 megahertz processor, 256 RAM, Windows XP, and 1.5 GB of hard drive space.It is recommended that you have a faster computer to run the program more smoothly.
Office 2007 will likely be available through the campus bookstore.
The academic version of Office will probably sell for about $150.Other editions of Microsoft Office retail for up to $450.In the coming months, Microsoft is expected to release Office 2007 for Macintosh.
Thrifty students should note that a comparable office suite called “Open Office” can also be freely downloaded from the internet.
Although inferior then Microsoft Office 2007, this legal and free alternative is rising in popularity. It features programs that are very similar to those found in Microsoft’s suite. The program can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org.
NATHAN THOMAS
BizTech Writer
