I’ve recently updated my Microsoft Office suite to Office 2007. My initial reaction? You see it in the title. The new interface, with its “ribbons” that change in context may well turn out to be the greatest boost to personal productivity since the ballpoint pen, but right now I’m happy not to be in the middle of a large, complex document project.

The Office application I use the most is Outlook. It is my mail client, keeps my contact, to-do, and appointment information, synchronizes with my cell phone, and generally helps keep me moving forward through the day. My first impression of the new version of Outlook is that it is noteably slower than the Office 2003 version I’ve been using. Startup takes several seconds longer, and switching from message to message has a meaningful lag. When I went through the updating process I added the instant desktop search feature (at Outlook’s suggestion), and that may account for much of the slowdown. Regardless, I’m less thrilled than I’d like to be.

The other thing that strikes a discordant chord is the new Office color scheme; it’s a pale, icy blue that doesn’t make me happy. I had used Windows’ Display app in the control panel to change the earlier version (and most other applications) to colors that please my eye, but Office 2007 has (so far) stubbornly resisted my attempts to alter its appearance. If I figure this one out, you’ll be the first to know.

Much more to come on this, but right now I’d say that the Office 2007 migration might well be much more painful for most users (and especially for enterprise users) than the Windows XP to Vista shift. 2007 is going to be such a fascinating year…

Categories: General computing
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