I have office 97 and I am proud of it.

I still run office 97. It's light, opens quickly, does everything I need it to do, and doesn't save in stupid docx format that nobody likes.
Is there any reason for a person to upgrade to office 2007?
What more do I need?

 

Well, .docx is a combination of XML architecture and ZIP compression for size reduction. If you're happy with Office 97, I am not going to force you to upgrade to 2007. Maybe trying out MS Office 2007 will let you know what you have been missing till now.

 

Try out Office 07 first. If you just use Word, you are probably fine with 97. I found a big improvement to Powerpoint, and it seems that older versions of Outlook will not work in Vista. As for the other programs, I don't use them often so I can't really comment on them.

Greg

 

you really shouldnt be proud, its embarrassing 11 years without an upgrade?

just so you dont get shocked at the improvements first try how office 2003, then 2007.
or if you really wana get shocked go straight to 2007 and see what your missing out on, 2007 is a huge step up

 

why fix what wasnt broken? props on going that long without an upgrade, ive always been a fan of old UI's just because of the simplicity. my theory is you will hate office 07. everone i talk to says 07 has a terrible UI, when in reality, its quite simple when you take time to learn it and get past the lack of drop down bars. im starting to like the lack of dropdowns and having them being replaced with a solid bar with everything there.

 

I will recommend Office 03, its the most practical and productive version.

The Office 07 interface is horrible IMO

 

i prefer the 07 interface, but thats just me. but is it true that 07 is a system resource hog? my uncle was telling me 07 kills performance and it would take my centrino back down to celeron speeds (i think thats the example he used).

 

I would probably still be using 97 myself if I didn't have to upgrade to get features I needed for class so I went to Office 03 and then to Office 07 less than a year later. I couldn't pass the deal up last year when Microsoft first started the "Ultimate Steal." $60 for Office Ultimate, SOLD! I do still have trouble finding stuff when its the first time I go to use a specific feature though.

 

Don't upgrade yet. The next version of Office will be out next year or in 2010. The first beta of it should be out before the end of the year.

 

Where are you getting that info from? And 2011 is a long ways from now. I don't beta test MS products...no point IMO.

And yeah I agree with an earlier poster...it's embarrassing...

 

http://arstechnica.com/journals/mic...opath-looks-for-new-dev-and-test-team-members
http://keznews.com/4798_Microsoft_to_alpha_test_Office_14_before_end_of_year
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=259
http://www.pcworld.com/article/142366/office_14_to_be_more_webfriendly_gates_says.html
http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/office14.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_14

 

There is a big jump from 2000 -> 2003. 97 is way old. I would say at least upgrade to 2003 if not 2007.

 

Umm congrats on living in the past dude. 2007 is the best out there to date.

 

Ehh, 97 is really too old, I've used Word 2000 on a xp machine and it gave me dejavu....

Tryout office 2007, they do have trails you know.

 

The best reason to upgrade it it makes some hard to find features in Word, Excel and Powerpoint much much easier to find. Compatability for .DOCX can be fixed by a free update from Microsoft.

Microsoft was getting to the point where if they started adding more features, they would either A. have to add more menus or B. bury them deeper into the interface. The Ribbon is the answer. It changes depending on what you are working on.

I like the new interface myself. It makes it a lot easier to work with Styles for one. Two, it makes working with tables a lot easier also. Rather than digging through dialog box after dialog box of features, I can use live Preview to find the look I want. Working with Charts and tables in Excel is about 1000000000 times easier now.

If all you do is type up stuff, change fonts and font sizes, then the new interface isn't going to affect your work. If you want to learn new features and maybe dabble in tables and charts, then the new interface is for you!!

 

I hated the UI til I got used to it, now I think its sleek, though I miss having most of the buttons right there to use (IE spell check, etc).

 

Heh.. I'm still using Works Suite 2001. I don't use it enough as it is to spend $100 If anything I'll download Open office.

 

Actually, I don't think there is any particular need to upgrade. If it weren't for caring somewhat about licensing restrictions and being able to afford to upgrade, I'd still be using Office 2000. And really, I don't mind using Office 2000 even now. Eventually the styles get outdated - Word 6 for example shows its age - but in terms of practicality even Word 6 would work were it not distributed on floppies.

As for .docx, you can set the default to .doc in 2007. They both have their advantages - I generally stick with .doc unless it has fancy math symbols that requires .docx to display correctly.

 

As a financial analyst and a power user of Excel in general....2003 is much better than 2007 imo.

I think 2007 is more of a windows version of trying to "mac up" excel and it might make it easier for the average user but it slows down the power user.

 

LOL. does using Office97 really make u feel that good? if we all felt that way i don't think technology would progress or life would move on... seriously dude upgrade. you dunno what your missing. or i guess u never will. btw what level are u on doom I? pipedream still fun?

LOL. thats a lie, and a very stereotype answer, your centrino to celeron running office? ROFLMAO. do you really have no faith in the power of ur laptop? tsk2x

my old *** dell 8200 pentium 4 1.7ghz with 512mb ram runs Office07 like a breeze.

i dont even think youve tried it once, the ribbion interface is soo simple and easy even my 60 year old dad got to work with it in 1 sitting compared to 03 which was tough.

live preview makes everything even easier. by hovering ur mouse over it... or is that too complicated for you?

if you dont upgrade now you'l never upgrade waiting for the next.

actually dont wait 2010 coz in 2014 theres gona be office 2015!!! wow! wait for that!


seriously dont knock it till u've tried it. move forward people. and stop with the office/windows hate... seriously its sooooooooooooo 1998.

 

Haha, good point. I will have to look into upgrading.
By the way, I am still working on trying to get that little ball past the other bar. Man, pong is frustrating... lol.

 

I like Office 2003 best out of the ones I've tried. Couldn't get used to 2007.

 

Good for you! You can work in word 97, while you watch re-runs of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and listen to The Spice Grils on your portable CD Player. Oh, and don't forget to backup on your Zip disk while you keep searching for Hale-Bop. And what can compare to the video quality of Titanic on VHS?

 

I agree with atbnet.

2007 rocks.

I still use Windows 98se....... NOT!

 

Hm, I bought Office 2003 almost 2 years ago. I only had the student version of Office 2000 before and could not upgrade with it. In all honesty I would be just as happy on Open Office and Thunderbird for email and saved myself a few hundred dollars. :\

 

Office 2007 is pretty nice actually. If your system if capable of handling it, you should upgrade. There's no reason to still have Office '97... Unless you have a computer that should be in 1997.

 

Honestally, use what you like... i use 07 on one computer, 03 on another, and 97 on another... i have no problems wit hall 3 of them

 

+1 for Office 2007!

It's UI is really a HUGE improvement over the previous versions.

 

I agree whole heartedly, but imo at the expense of productivity.

boo

 

I use Office 2007.

Honestly, even if you hate the ribbon interface (which I have no problems with), all of that can be solved with simple plug-ins:

http://in.geocities.com/shahshaileshs/

Ah, the power of plug-ins

 

I think everyone is missing the point of the upgrades. It isn't what you see, or even the interface, that's important. There have been vast changes in VB and the entire architecture of the programs. For anyone who has actually written code in Access, Word, and Excel (and even PowerPoint, to a certain degree), there is no doubt that staying with 97, 2000, or even 2003 is downright silly. I've been writing code since '97 came out, and what took calls to the kernel back then have now been included in VBA/VBE. The ease to call Word, Excel, and Access from within the different Office applications is has improved by an order of magnitude with each release. Printer control is now child's play, compared to the custom code required to just select anything other than the default printer. I could go on and on, but I think everyone should understand my point.

So, feel free to stick with 97 - but if you ever decide to write custom Office applications, you might want to join the 21st century.

 

It took me a long time to get used to 07 but I like the extra features, especially in power point.

With Open Office and Abiword, I don't see the point of staying with 97.

 

The UI does not suck. I hated it the first few days cause it was so different, once you use it for a little bit you start to memorize where all the functions are and how to get to the extra features.

For all those saying "well i dont like it cause the interface sucks", please, get with the times. 20 years from now, you cant stay with Word 2003 or 97 just because the UI is different. So why wait now?

I'm just as fast on 2007 as I was in 2003. Productivity is no different after a little bit of use and the UI is much cleaner once you start to accept it. Plus the new formatting options for pictures, tables and text is absolutely great.

And no one likes .docx? How does that even make sense?

 

There are a few ideological trainwrecks here.

If the only motivation to work on something was because it was broken, then all of progress should be thrown out the window. Windows 95 wasn't broken. Neither was DOS. In fact, the whole punchcard system worked great, so maybe we should have stopped there. Actually, things seemed to get along fine in the days before electricity became a commonly used form of power, so we really should have stopped wasting our efforts once we got to gas-powered street lamps and horse-drawn buggies, because those worked and weren't broken.

Docx is actually better in that it is human-readable once you unzip it. The only reason people ever say that docx sucks is because they're too dumb to download the free converter (available for both Mac and Windows). Oh wait, I guess the converter doesn't work with Office 97; bummer.

 

The UI takes a bit of time to get used to, but it is definitely better in the end. only thing I don't like is that you can't customize charts in excel as well as you could in earlier versions.