I’ve resisted the plunge to Office 2007 for months now. I couldn’t see the need of the thing when Office 2003 was still kicking butt for me. I use Project, Outlook, Visio, and Excel daily and Word at least half the week. I also am a fan of open source. Therefore, I’ve been using OpenOffice more and more. I like it and it’s getting better all the time. Plus, it runs on Linux, which I use about half the time whereas Office is stuck on Windows and Macs.

So, you can see that resistant is perhaps too light a word for my case. As I was flipping through the TechNet disk library, it hit me that I need to at least test drive the thing. This gave me the opportunity to do a dual test drive, Office 2007 running on XP running on Virtual PC 2007 (VPC).

Installation

The installation of VPC went extremely well. I created a new virtual machine with the wizard, a new virtual disk and went about configuring it. I gave it 1GB of ram and 80gigs of hard drive space. XP installation and SPing went well too, ran super fast because of the 1GB and the XP CD was an ISO file. Working with virtual servers a lot, I know that an ISO file can save you copious amounts of time. Not as much as a copied virtual machine (VM) that’s been sysprepped already, but still good time.

After getting XP all licensed up, I shut down the VM. I then copied its vhd and vmc files to another drive. This is so that I can create another virtual from these and can stress this one to destruction by trying out all kinds of things I wouldn’t do for a normal machine. Next I switched the network adapters available to the VM so that it couldn’t see the outside world anymore.

Office 2007 installation also went well, lots of eye candy for those that need that. Heck, who doesn’t need eye candy! After the full blown installation, I installed Project and Visio and a few other things I wanted to try out. It was then I realized that I should have waited before switching the network over. Having a 2GB USB stick works great in times list this. I downloaded the hot fixes to it and then installed.

On the Test Bed

Using Excel first, I was greeted by my first sighting of the ribbon interface. I was amazed. Very intuitive, very well laid out, very well suited to the way I work in Excel. When crunching numbers, I use Conditional Format a lot, I mean a LOT! It allows me to almost instantly see when something doesn’t jive. So to see that it has its own icon on the ribbon gave me a big smile.

Word was also nice. It’s a productivity boost to see how your changes look live, and not having to click and select repeatedly to find that fit between font, sizes, and styles. I create a lot of client facing documents and I see that this too will be a good fit for me. I use PowerPoint very rarely, mostly looking at things others have done. I use Publisher sparingly. I am pretty much old school using Word and Excel to do the bulk of my DTP and charting.

Outlook and Project will have to wait a few days on my thoughts on them. I use them too much for two days to tell the real deal. My first impressions are good. My hesitations on upgrading are gone.

2003 was an Ivy League year for Microsoft. Exchange, Server, and Office were all excellent releases from a company that hits good one year, and bad the next. My experiences with Office and Exchange thus far, have me thinking that Microsoft may have broken that cycle. 2005 was good year with Studio, SQL Server, and MOM flying the flag well. If Vista holds up, then this could be 4 years of good solid releases. That’s good for you and me because the other vendors have to anti up and step up to the plate with good solid products to stay in competition.

Synopsis

If you have been holding back on upgrading, I recommend taking the plunge. I have. I’ve upgrade the basic Office already, Project and Visio will come after I close out on the remaining things I have to use them for. All new stuff will go to the 2007 versions.