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 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007The product works but I had to install 4 different times because it would only load one thing at a time: Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint. I don't know if it was Vista issue or product issue. Rating:  - New UserI know that I give this office 5 stars because I never used the older versions that the other reviewers did. I did have to take the tutorials. I have really enjoyed the office and it has been a great learning experience. Other reviewers that gave the Office low scores were the ones that had the older version. They had a lot of changes and a lot of new things to learn which they did not enjoy. I can say that if you never used any other version of office you will enjoy the 2007 full version. You do have to take the tutorials to get the full benefits of the office. I have been using the office for all most 2 months at the end of August. I would recommend this to my friends if they are interested in putting in the time to learn the software. Rating:  - Waste of money? Um, yeah.It appears what happened was someone sitting around the old Microsoft Offices said "Hey, I got a great idea! Let's make Office look really pretty! We may have to take away some of the functionality, but hey, it will look great!" My problem is I need tools such as a workhorse spreadsheet program, a powerful word processor, a flexible database, and stunning presentation program to successfully complete my job. Upon purchasing Office 2007, I was expecting expanded features and functions to assist me in doing so, just like every update had previously provided me. Instead I found myself with a redesigned interface (which takes time to learn) and an actual reduction of features from Office 2003 (which Microsoft freely admits occurred, because they couldn't fit a few of the features into the new interface). So what you are in fact spending your hard earned money on is a group of programs designed to look really good (with neato 3D graphics, wow!), but at the expense of taking away your tools rather than expanding them. Waste of money? Um, yeah. I recommend waiting until Microsoft finally comes to the realization that how the software looks is truly the least of my concerns because I have work to do. Rating: - Dumbed down and harder to useThe new ribbon design is supposed to make it easier to learn and use. It may be for some new users but for experienced users, it isn't. This version takes away some critical nuts & bolts customization features and many tasks now take longer to perform. This is not due to the learning curve, it is the inherent nature of the way the ribbon works. Once you are familiar with the program, nothing is faster than the old menu structure. If Microsoft added an option to allow users to choose between menus and ribbons, it would be the best of both worlds, satisfying the needs of both new and experienced users. The new version does not run macros as fast however. My recommedation for existing users: keep Office 2003 for as long as you can and consider going to Open Office when Microsoft no longer supports 2003 (unless they restore the functionality in a newer release of 2007). Rating: - New face, new goodies.It takes about a week to get familiar with the new menus of Office 2007. But the new features of Office are worth it. Here are some highlights: Word can now save your document to PDF without purchasing Acrobat as a separate install. Word allows you to visually preview a style on a section or paragraph of your document before you permanently apply it. Great for designing on-the-fly layouts. Print quality of a document seems to be a lot snazzier making it look like I had a professional layout artist add finishing touches. Importing Excel tables into Acces is a lot faster and more intuitive. I receive business data from our agents which I move into Access before loading into SQL Server 2005. Yup, Access is my Swiss knife-of-choice to handle normalizing all forms of biz info before uploading into SQL server. All these tools work flawlessly in our Vista professional environment. And if you're like me who's worked over 20 years on Wall Street, accurate data and effective communication is priceless. Office 2007 allows me to achieve this goal.
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